


The Pack Goes Camping

by zorotokon



Category: Pack Street - Fandom, Zootopia (2016)
Genre: Camping, F/M, Interspecies Romance, POV First Person, POV Third Person
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-02-24
Updated: 2017-11-10
Packaged: 2018-09-26 16:28:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9911273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zorotokon/pseuds/zorotokon
Summary: It's the hottest summer Zootopia has seen in decades, and the nocturnal animals of Pack Street are suffering. V comes up with the wild idea of taking the pack into the mountains, where it's cool. With promises of fresh air and running water, the animals are roped into the adventure. Of course, the best part of nature is just how alone you can be in it, and they all take the opportunity to get really introspective about their lives since the Savage conspiracy was ended.





	1. National Lambpoon's Vacation

**Author's Note:**

> Set several months after the movie's conclusion. This is the prologue of a long series of works, please check back once in a blue moon for any possible subsequent chapters.

 

It was summer in Zootopia, and I was a sheep on Pack Street. Months ago, when I first moved in, the sheep part was what had given me trouble, but now that summer was here, the blazing heat was a lot higher on the totem pole. My wool had gotten out of control again. No doubt because I don’t shear it nearly as often as I should. Come to think of it, the last time I had gotten it done the Savage conspiracy was still in full swing. That had been one of my first intimately embarrassing moments with the pack, and sometimes I still can’t look Betty in the eye when I pass her stoop of choice.

Charlie had moved in a couple of weeks ago, since we were a couple, and she spent all of her time here anyway. Marty wasn’t too broken up about her leaving, saying that she was my mess now. I was messy as well though, so the detritus of discarded fast food containers and unwashed clothes quickly made it impossible to tell who was the messier. She said it was like finally finding a home, whatever that meant. Another upshot was that there were double the hands to do the work when someone did finally guilt us into cleaning. Charlie’s reasoning for moving in had been so she could finally have a live in boyfriend and not have to bother with things like dating, the club, or going outside.

Right now she was lazed out on the couch with a box fan pointed directly at her. Even with the big fan blowing up a mini tornado all day, we still had trouble in our mornings, which were evenings by diurnal standards. It was livable by like 11 pm, but everything before that was a miserable wash.

Speaking of washing, I needed to get a shower before my night started. I had been sweating buckets already and I was nearly dripping. Wool can be disgusting, even when properly kept, and properly kept does not describe me in the slightest. I stepped into the tiled alcove and closed the clear plastic door behind me, prepped supplies in a basket. Washing for sheep was a marathon, not a sprint. I left the bathroom door itself open so I could listen to the TV with Charlie. A news anchor was wrapping up a story on a local series of break-ins when they turned to the weather.

“With record high temperatures all throughout Zootopia, the hottest summer in memory continues. General Zoolectric representatives say the cause of the blackouts is-” And he cut out. So did the light in the bathroom, and the whir of the fan.

“Shit, not again,” Charlie exclaimed. It sounded like she started running, then a heavy thump of her tripping, then the unmistakable sound of claws on glass. “God damn it, Remmy, why don’t you have windows that face the street?”

“Bedroom,” I reply. What was going on? I grabbed a towel and squelched out to find her peeking out the bedroom window at the street below. I joined her. There were a couple of animals on the street, and the opposite building looked dark, probably hit by the blackout too. “Charlie, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Her fur lowered with each puff of breath she regained, she must have sprinted like a madman in those last thirty seconds to be this winded. “It’s not the cops.”

“And why would it be the cops?”

She froze. She was thinking up some sort of lie, I had known her long enough to recognize when she had been caught without an alibi, and that was her desperately trying to make something up face. She was better around others, but let her guard down around me, which is actually pretty indicative of the level of trust in our relationship.

“You know what? Never mind, I’m going to try to finish my shower.” I walked back, shedding water as I went. I didn’t care, the carpet would be dry in minutes in this heat anyway. I think Charlie returned to the couch, I couldn’t see from the bathroom.

Back in, I leaned against the tile, resting my forehead on a cool spot. In a couple of seconds the water was going to be freezing, which actually sounded really great right now. If only I could see the bottles in my basket that would allow me to actually get clean instead of just getting wet.

Finally the water got cold. God, it felt so good as it worked its way through my wool, eventually dribbling lightly over my skin. It’s going to be hell after, when I’m toweling off and freezing for thirty minutes, but I'll deal with that later. Right now, the cold felt amazing. The water seemed to weaken on my face. I hit the showerhead, it sputtered, then stopped completely.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I leveled at it. This was not what I needed right now.

“Mhh?” Charlie murmured, her muzzle flat on her chest.

“Water just cut off.”

“We payed the bill.”

I hit the showerhead again, scattering a few droplets over me, but no more. “Maybe it’s the whole building.” I hoped it was, otherwise I would have to call the water company and that was another fucking hassle I didn’t need.

“Did you at least get wet?” Charlie got up from the couch, her voice growing louder as she walked towards me.

“Yeah, but just that.”

“Perfect.”

Her form appeared in the doorway, silhouetted in the sunset. She wasn’t wearing a shirt or pants, not like I hadn’t seen everything already anyway, and it was too hot for real clothes. She slipped off her underwear and pulled open the shower door.

“Uh, what’cha doing?”

“Getting more comfortable.” She groped at the air between us with her claws as she came closer. I should probably be used to this by now, but she’s still a weirdo sometimes. My weirdo though, and a cute one.

She lunged forward as only a predator could and grabbed my wool, pulling me down into the shower with her. I bleated in surprise, but she just lay there, holding me on top of her.

“Aaaah, that’s good.” She was literally using me as a sponge, grabbing me and squeezing, forcing the cold water out of my wool and onto her. I snuck a quick peck at her muzzle and she licked my cheek back.

“Agh, why you gotta be like that.”

“Shh, water doesn’t talk.”

Maybe my shearing can wait.

 

Two floors up, Al was having a similar experience with his shower, although his beau, V, had been watching a movie instead of the news. He fumbled for a towel. Some canines liked to shake themselves dry, but he didn’t have that barbaric of a personality. His dad had shaken himself dry. Al used a towel.

“It was just getting to the part where the guy’s face gets melted off,” V pouted from the couch. She had her knees drawn up to her chest, but she was on her side, taking up only a single cushion. “That’s my favorite part.”

“At least I hadn’t started the shampoo,” Al finished drying, threw on some sweat pants and joined the deer on the couch, pulling her close. She pushed herself into him, ruffling both their fur. Unlike Remmy’s apartment, Al _did_ have AC, and V had been running it all day, so the close contact was pleasantly warm in the chill.

“Mmm, hey Al?” V, looked up at him, running her dainty hooves through the fur on his chest.

“Yeah?” He replied.

“Have you ever gone camping?”

Al chuckled a little, “Nope, I don’t think anyone here has.” He readjusted their positions, allowing V to more comfortably spread herself across the couch, but still keeping her against him. “Camping’s not exactly within our price range.”

She sat up, surprise on her face. “Really? But it seems so practical, and so you.”

He arched an eyebrow. “How’s that? It’s like furnishing a second house that you have to carry with you.” He wasn’t sure if her last bit was because he was a construction worker, or if she saw him as an outdoorswolf, which he was not. He had been born and raised in Zootopia, and had only driven out of the city once, to rescue a pack member from being stranded after the trains had stopped running.

V laughed; that high tittering she did when she thought Al was joking. He wasn’t, but she didn’t have to know that. “Oh, you just need a tent, a sleeping bag, and some food.” She brought his paws to her hooves while she said it, looking first down, then at Al. She had the prettiest eyes he’d ever seen, even now, months after they had got engaged. Against those eyes, he had no hope, but he would at least go down fighting.

“There’s gotta be more to it than that, what about a backpack?”

“Any old thing will do.” She dismissed.

“A cooler?”

“You have a cooler.”

“A camping spot!” He was grasping at straws, “You can’t just camp on the side of the road, that’s illegal!”

“Honey,” She nuzzled up against him, “That’s less than the cost of a beer at a bar.”

This was where he would normally make one last desperate attempt at an out, and she would chide him, and it would be over. V got her way a lot, especially with Al, but he was fine with that. Also she was definitely way smarter than him, and her suggestions were almost always for his own good. “Okay, let’s go camping.”

Her face lit up. “We can!?” Her smile flashing like a string of diamonds in the evening sun. “Oh, Al, you know just what to say!” She kissed him, then rubbed her cheek along his neck before continuing in a more sultry tone, “Now, why don’t we get a little dirty while we’re waiting for the water to come back on?” Now THAT made Al smile.

As they took the conversation to the bedroom, Al thought, ‘Yeah, I could really use a vacation. No power, no water, and hundred degree days, the past week’s been hell. It would be nice to sit out where there’s a breeze and get some sleep out where you could really see the moon.’ There was something right about that.

 

“Okay, pack,” Began Al to the assembled animals. For once, the all -paws meeting had brought out everyone, even if he had to lug his coffeemaker to the lobby to entice the more reclusive members. “As you know, the building has been hit by power outages,”

“We’ve noticed,” Cut in a bleary eyed Avo. Her fur was a mess, humidity combined with an inability to blow dry it after her usual morning ablutions.

“And water problems,” He continued.

“We’ve noticed that too.” That was Charlie. In contrast with her usually oily appearance, today she looked sticky, with clumps of fur coming together to form mats. Remmy bleated in agreement next to her and sucked on his coffee. He didn’t look much better.

“And so, V and I are taking a trip into the mountains and camping out for a week.” No immediate response, not even facial reactions. Maybe holding this meeting right after everyone had woken up was a bad idea. The free coffee was working as intended though, and his pack was slowly waking up in front of his eyes. It would have been amusing in a certain way, if Al found any humor in situational comedy.

Ozzy supplied the giggles for him, “He he, that’s nice, man, but, like, what’s that gotta do with us?” The rest of the pack nodded, except for Betty, who was frowning and side-eyeing him and V. “I mean, no offense, and it’s cool that you’re taking a vacay, I think we could all use one.” Again the pack nodded, V must have let a smirk appear on her lips because Betty’s frown had increased into a disgruntled slouch. “But, if this whole thing is just to announce to us that you’re jetting for a week, I’d like a refund on the three hours of sleep I had to leave upstairs for this.”

“Ah, that’s where you’re wrong,” Started V. Betty sighed and covered her eyes. “Because you are all going to come with us, where will we camp out as a pack until the water has been fixed!”

She looked so happy in that moment. It was such a shame that it was followed by stunned silence. Then everyone complaining at once.

“Do you seriously think the library can survive without me for even a day, let alone a whole week?”

“But my gains, I can’t let this Adonis of a body go to ruin.”

“Exactly, Remmy needs to get swole if he expects to keep dicking me.”

“I can’t take a week off work.”

“That sounds cool, man, I’m in.”

“Are you buying the booze?”

“If he says yes, I’m in too.”

“I knew it. I fucking knew it.”

“Wait, did you seriously just say swole?”

“No.”

“Shut up! All of you!” Al had to shout to get any attention.

“I mean, that isn’t even local terminology, where did you hear that?”

“Avo, I said shut up.”

“Make me.”

“Gladly.”

“Al, Avo,” V’s voice cut in, she was in full _social good_ mode, and just their names in that voice cowed the arguing wolves. “While it is true that all of us have very busy lives, I will personally speak to your employers and explain the situation. It would not be acceptable to expect you to continue to work without access to power or water during your off time.” She smiled, her voice softening a little. Charlie crawled out from behind the couch as nonchalantly as she could. She had instinctively leaped for cover when V had used her authority voice.

“If that’s settled, then good, we will be leaving on Thursday at five thirty, please have all your things down here and ready to go by then, that is all.”

The pack exchanged looks as Al and V returned to his apartment.

“I guess we’re going camping now.” Said Wolter.

“I guess we are.” Replied Anneke.


	2. The Pack Enjoys a Drive

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The day has come. The bell has tolled. The animals have assembled for their forced vacation, somber, and sober. Too bad their ride is nowhere to be found.

The first evidence that the camping trip was real, and happening, and to them, was a sheet of paper taped to the door of every resident of the Pack Street Apartments. It issued the bold proclamation that everyone would be participating in “a fun, multicultural bonding experience where we can all get to know each other a little better, and spend a week taking in the sights and sounds of a naturally breathtaking lake shore.” Attendance was mandatory. It then listed each participant by name, and gave them a herculean task to accomplish before Thursday. Failure would be punishable by death, success by spending a week in the wilderness. A true Sophie’s Choice.

The condemned prisoners’ sentences read thusly:

Al and V: food, beer, transportation.

Avo: cooking supplies.

Marty: cleaning solvents, plastic tubs, sponges.

Betty: medical.

Charlie: bug spray.

Anneke: water.

Wolter: lanterns.

Ozzy: music.

Remmy: misc.

“The fuck am I supposed to do with miscellaneous?” Remmy was standing outside his door, paper in hoof. Annie and Wolt were sharing their copy across the hall, having similar reactions.

“I don’t know,” Started Annie, or maybe Wolt. Last night they had played host to one of their infamous night-long parties, and the only meaningful difference between the two at this point of exhaustion was limited to the pants department. “But if they seriously think that we are going on this with only beer and water, they have another thing coming.”

Wolt, or Annie, ducked inside their apartment before returning with a marker. The twin scratched off the water assignment under Anneke, and replaced it with ‘BOOZE 4 ALL.’ The other twin then did the same for Wolter’s, replacing lanterns with ‘CONDOMS AND LUBE.’

“Now that’s my kind of vacation.” Remmy’s comment got a snigger from the Aardwolves, and a double fist bump.

“Should we tell Al about this?” The ram asked, the smiles of the two hyenas faded instantly.

“Uh, maybe.” Remmy was almost sure that one was Anneke. Almost.

“Should we bring the stuff anyway? Double dip style?” No, wait, that was definitely an Anneke expression.

“If we can pawn it off on someone else…” The two looked at Remmy.

“No way.” Remmy killed that idea off before they even had a chance to ask.

“Ugh, fine.” The twins looked forlornly at the paper, readying the marker, mentally preparing to scribble themselves back into water and lantern hell.

“Snnrk,” The assembled looked towards the stair well, where Ozzy was failing to contain a laugh.

“And what’s funny now, stripes?” Probed probably Wolter, his irritation clipping out any sort of greeting.

“It’s just, heh,” The hyena tried to speak, but interrupted himself with a bark of laughter. He slammed his paws around his muzzle, twitching occasionally as he waited for the fit to subside. “It’s just that you guys have all this real stuff to do, and I’ve been assigned music.” Ozzy tended to laugh when he was nervous, or happy, or drunk, or depressed. It was a trial, reading Ozzy’s intent, but the three had learned patience was the best way to let him get around to his point eventually. “If that’s what V thinks I’m best at, but, it’s just funny, you know?”

Annie and Wolt exchanged looks, they liked Ozzy, as he was one of the few animals who could keep up with their insane energy and hedonistic lifestyle, but they didn’t know how to deal with him outside of the club. “I mean, music IS what you’re best at, Oz.” Annie admitted.

The Hyena shrugged, then leaned hard on the wall, giggling to himself. Remmy had dealt with Ozzy before, and a long time ago he had misread him, which had led to the worst three days of his life. Interpreting Ozzy was an art, but Remmy had a tinge of an idea of what he really wanted from this conversation.

Welp, sink or swim, as they say. “Hey, Oz, I saw you a couple days ago throwing out a bunch of milk jugs, right?”

Ozzy nodded. “Yeah, it’s the artificial stuff, tastes like phony sugar and cream, but it’s that or juice.”

“Do you have more, like, a LOT more?”

“Jugs?” Ozzy asked. The hyena thought in straight lines, but on different levels than everyone else. The fact that he wasn’t laughing meant that Remmy was probably nearing those levels.

“Yeah, if you fill like twenty with water, then Annie won’t have to worry about that.” If Remmy was right, and he probably wasn’t but oh well, then Ozzy’s outburst earlier had been a nervous self-deprecation. Like all he was good for was music, while everyone else had these big, important jobs. You could live without music, but not without water.

Ozzy nodded, mulling the idea over, then he chuckled. It was probably the satisfied chuckle he got when he actually liked how something sounded. He didn’t get to use it often. “Yeah, yeah, I can do that.”

“Sweet,” said one of the siblings. “Now we just need to figure out the light situation.” Remmy shrugged. He had worked one miracle today already, and that put him over the daily quota of expected good deeds by a solid one.

“We’ll think of something tomorrow.” Said the other twin.

“Yeah, tomorrow.” Agreed probably Annie.

They shut themselves in against the glare of sunrise before Remmy could reply. He spent the rest of the day wondering if they ever took off the red plastic cups they had been using as party hats.

 

The pile of bags, coolers, tarps, and miscellaneous flotsam for the camping trip came into being Thursday afternoon, which was absurdly early morning for the pack. The fuzziness of sleep made the assembly seem daunting to the usually late-rising nocturnals. By instinct, each animal was next to their stack of stuff, less protectively, and more because it meant that you had something to sit on. V had given them all clear instructions to load at five, because they were leaving at six, and anyone not ready would be dragged off kicking and screaming, and then left by the side of the road somewhere in the wilderness.

It was 5:30, and no one had seen Al or V since last night.

Remmy suppressed a yawn, Charlie was leaning on him, her mouth open, eyes closed, long ago having given into the temptation of sleep. The two animals were sharing Remmy’s tent as a makeshift bench, and had a prime pred-watching spot in the corner.

Ozzy had made good on his promise, and was surrounded by a castle of old milk jugs he had filled from Betty’s taps. Everyone had been in and out of Betty’s place for their water needs the last week. Be it cleanliness, cooking, or cleaning, it was Betty you bothered. She would be very glad when the water over here got fixed. Ozzy also had his guitar across his back and a couple ratty gym bags at his feet. His collection was downright luxurious compared to the black she-wolf’s, who had brought a tall back-braced camping bag, and not much else. In contrast, the twins had packed like they were going to fashion-based war. Their accoutrement counted nine suitcases in total, plus a tent, two sleeping bags, a foam mattress, and a couple backpacks that buzzed and, when Wolter had stumbled over one earlier, leaked suspiciously.

Marty’s actual gear was hidden behind the full-sized bottles of dish soap and antibacterial foam he had picked up for the trip. The chemicals were nearly twice as big as him, and it remained a mystery how he had gotten them there. Besides Betty, Avo looked the most practical with a backpack, the bag she usually took to the gym, and a couple of large plastic totes that were labeled with what cooking equipment could be found within.

Al and V didn’t have piles. When Wolt had brought it up, the rest of the animals just shrugged. Remmy and Charlie sat in the second largest pile behind the aardwolves’. After wracking his brain for days on what he should buy for the trip, the ram had finally given up and just zoogled it. The internet was more than helpful about suggestions on what he should bring, but was much less interested in what he shouldn’t. Thus, to compliment his tent/impromptu bench, he had a half dozen camping chairs, two lanterns, metal skewers, a car converter, seven pounds of chocolate, a box of graham crackers, a bag of giant marshmallows, a fishing rod, a bocce ball set, a radio extender kit, a box full of plastic lures, water purification pills, altitude sickness drugs, two sleeping bags, a literal can of worms, extra blankets, four pillows, a fire axe, a spade, a hacksaw, and a bottle of gin. He was pretty sure he had forgotten something.

“Anyone know where the big guy is?” Annie asked, tapping on her phone. The assembled animals half assed a chorus of no’s. Marty had seen them walking out yesterday with their stuff on their backs, but not since.

“So, you think they ditched us?” Annie asked.

“They aren’t that dumb,” responded Betty, “Well, V isn’t.”

“Fuck this waiting shit then,” Annie jumped up and stretched. “I’m grabbing breakfast, you coming?” The question was to Wolt, who nodded and got up with her. The pair had matching sunglasses, and hadn’t used the trip today as justification for not going clubbing yesterday. Only Avo had been awake to see it, but before the lobby had filled up with crap, they had shooed out their respective night conquests with a slap on the ass and a, “No, I’ll call you.”

“Anyone else in?” The question stirred Charlie, who transitioned into being awake by drooling slightly less on her bf’s arm.

“Yeah, I’m coming.” Breakfast sounded great to Remmy right now. Food in general, really. Charlie stood up with him, nodding at the twins in acknowledgement. “Where you thinking?

Annie shrugged, “Bug Burga I guess.”

“Coffee and grease, perfect,” Agreed Wolt.

“If the lovebirds show up while we’re gone tell them we died.” The four took one step onto the sidewalk and regretted it. It had been an absurd hundred and ten at noon, and the sun was still blazing above.

“God damn, Remmy, how do sheep do this?” Charlie’s squint was working overdrive against the glare, her eyes turned into lines, even underneath the shadow of her paws. Ahead the twins were jumping from patch of grass to patch of grass, swearing when they had to touch the baking concrete.

“Usually we don’t.” Remmy’s hooves offered him a little more protection, but he was also more used to walking on the black pavement that got hot as coals every summer. “Sheep never lived where it got this hot, or this bright.” He was having flashbacks of a talk he did long ago. He’d been meaning to put together another one, but had never gotten around to it. “If it did we hid in caves until the sun went down.”

“A cave sounds real nice right now.”

The walk to Bug Burga was less than five minutes, but the four animals were panting and sweating when they arrived. They collapsed in a booth, letting the air conditioning work its magic. The place was empty except for a stoned looking badger behind the counter.

“Remmy, order for us.” Wolt pleaded, his face was flat on the cool table.

“Combo four,” requested Charlie.

“Iced coffee, and a number two,” Annie pulled out her wallet, throwing a couple bucks on the table.

“Same for me.” Said Wolt, Annie threw a couple more. Remmy grabbed the cash and went up to order.

“Hey, Rex, what’s eatin' ya?”

The badger behind the counter smiled slowly, his eyes blinking at a snail’s pace. “Remmy, my man, what can I do ya for?” Remmy rattled off the list of orders, then added a double roach deluxe and a soda for himself, plus a hot coffee for Charlie. Rex dutifully tapped it into the machine, took his money, and then handed him the receipt.

“Thanks, Rex.”

“Anytime you’re buying, I’m selling.”

When Remmy returned to the table the three predators were deep in conversation about the only thing of interest in the fast food joint: them.

“So, this girl was just all over us last night, like bam, you know,” Charlie nodded, not looking at the twin that had spoken. “And I was all like, girl, if you want it, you can have it, but you gotta bring some meat to this veg platter.”

“And then what happened?” Prompted Remmy. All of Wolt’s stories ended with him fucking someone, but it was always an amusing ride getting there.

“She brought over this, I shit you not, Remmy, a back-up dancer for Gazelle!” The two wolves looked so excited that the ram had to smile. “Said he was fresh off the _Try Everything_ tour.”

“Cruising for some cheap fun in the slums?” Interjected Charlie, the walk had woken her up a little, although her glazed expression and a faraway tinge to her voice would last at least until her second cup of coffee.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” Annie took over the story, “When we get back to our place, we throw on some of the ol’ bump and grind, and the four of us are getting into it.”

“Touching, feeling, throwing clothes across the room, the uze.” Helped Wolt.

“And then I get to his pants and it turns out that he’s wearing his costume from the show under them! You know, the hot pants!”

“Holy shit, what?” Remmy asked, incredulous.

“Yeah, that’s why it got so loud, had our own private entertainment.” Anneke grinned as she finished. If she wanted to tell the rest, it got lost in the clamor of the food arriving. They ate in silence, each animal concentrating on the burga and side in front of them.

Remmy restarted the conversation with a, “So, you two ever been to the mountains?” He was still nervous about the trip, and if chill could be used to describe anyone, it could be used to describe Anneke and Wolter. Maybe some would rub off on him. They both shook their heads to the negative.

“Didn’t you guys move to the city, though?” Remmy had once helped Wolt and Annie with their past, something about a pig and a locket, but had never gone so far as to actually question either of them about what had happened.

“Yeah,” Replied Annie, “But where we come from is flatter than here.” For a second her metropolitan accent slipped, and an almost honky drawl sidled in at the end. Wolter nudged her into silence.

“No mountains for us, unless you count once going to a roof top party at a skyscraper.” He had exaggerated his enunciation, making sure that there wasn’t a doubt that he was a city boy through and through.

“So you don’t know what we’re going to actually be doing out there?” Remmy was almost pleading, he just needed someone to say that it was going to be okay, maybe just imply it.

The twins shrugged. “Probably same thing we do here, but with a better view.”

“Drinking, sleeping, eating.”

“Partying, dancing, hitting up cute guys on Timber.”

“Or girls.”

“Biggest difference is probably going to be the bugs.”

Charlie choked as the last drips of her coffee went down the wrong pipe. Remmy slapped her on the back, causing the fox to cough and splutter more. She gasped for breath and held onto the table, trying to control the spasms.

“You alright?”

“Hot. Coffee. Too hot.” She straightened up, fishing out Remmy’s wallet in the same motion. She pulled the cash from it and left the gutted pleather on the table. “I just remembered I have an appointment with a supplier that I really can’t miss. I’ll be back home in time to leave, sorry, Rem.” She kissed him as she slid herself out of the bench, then bolted off.

“What the fuck was that?” Asked Annie.

“Charlie being Charlie,” Remmy took another bite of his burga and replaced his wallet. Three months ago a girl literally reaching into his pocket for cash would have sent him on an insane spiral, but that was before Charlie. He caught the eyes of the two animals across from him, one full of confusion, the other full of disdain and sadness. “She’s good for it, always pays me back.”

Wolt made a cracking sound and pretended to whip the air. Annie continued to look confused. “And you just let her?”

Remmy shrugged. “It’s mostly hers anyway. Moving boxes around a warehouse at three in the morning still doesn’t pay well.” Now Annie looked horrified. “Oh, come off it. She never does anything actually illegal, okay? Never anything that hurts people.” Wolt raised a set of bushy eyebrows. “Well, she doesn’t tell me about it anyway, ‘cept when she needs help.”

“Remmy,” Annie grabbed one of his hoofs and straightened her expression to a serious monotone. “Is Charlie forcing you to break the law?” Wolt adopted the same expression and nodded next to her. “We’re pack, so you can tell us.”

“Guys, that’s nice, but, that’s seriously just Charlie being Charlie.” The aardwolves’ expression became pained, almost breaking out into tears. “I knew what I was getting into when we started dating, and I think her extra-legal activities can be quite exciting.” He pulled his hoof away, Wolt folded his arms on the table and put his head into the cavity they formed, his chest heaving hard up and down as he suppressed sobs. “I just want you guys to know that this intervention really isn’t necessary.”

Annie put her fist into her mouth and bit down gently, Wolt was shaking. “Guys, are you okay?” Remmy reached out for Wolt, brushing the fur along his arm in a hopefully friendly show of solidarity. He pushed into the touch, and Remmy felt a twinge of guilt. This impromptu feelings sesh was going south fast. Annie had shut her eyes and was pounding on the table with her free paw. “I know that you care a lot about me, but I can take care of myself this time, ‘sides, Charlie’s pack too.” Wolt choked behind his arms. “She wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, at least, not on purpose.”

“You got that covered yourself, mate!” Wolt’s voice was high pitched, and when he moved his arms there were tears streaming down his face. Annie was shaking silently, her lips drawn back into a toothy grin around her fist. The two’s high pitched giggles came back down into Remmy’s hearing range within seconds.

“Oh.” The two convulsed in their seats, completely overtaken by fits of laughter. Remmy narrowed his eyes and glared at the two, once again the butt of an infinitely long series of jokes by his neighbors.

They laughed as he threw away the trash. They turned to guffawing as they left Bug Burga. They had reduced themselves to a background chortle on the walk home, Remmy refusing to rise to their jabs. The pack was still all assembled in the lobby, although Betty and Avo had acquired jerky from somewhere, Ozzy was working his way through a jug of orange juice, and Marty was popping dried crickets one leg at a time into his tiny mouth. Charlie was already back, sipping on another coffee as she sat on the tent. She waved them over. A new fanny pack was around her waist, but she otherwise looked the same.

“No alpha or his dear yet.” Charlie turned her head, recognizing the annoyed expression on Remmy’s face. “Did I miss something?”

“No.” Replied Remmy.

“Yes,” countered Wolt, grabbing at Annie, “We had a long hard discussion about our future and how Remmy’s going to marry every single member of the pack and fuck us every night until we’re satisfied. Then go to work sixty hours a day, nine days a week to support all his baby mommas.”

Remmy’s mouth scrunched up like he had been eating lemons since the day he was born, and the look he gave the smaller hyena could have turned milk into yogurt, skipping straight past mere curdling.

“Aw, that doesn’t sound so bad, Rems.” Charlie pulled at his wool until he sat down beside her. “You need a bigger girl for you sometimes, those five inches I can’t take must be getting cold after all this time.”

Ozzy barked out a laugh and the rest of the pack joined him. Remmy lay back onto his supplies, just letting the ridicule wash over. The hard bump of something hitting the back of his head reminded him that he had packed an emergency supply of alcohol. At least he had that to look forward to. Avo appeared in his substantial field of vision.

“Man, I had forgotten about that.” She turned to Charlie, “How much he pay you to keep up that nine inch fib?”

Charlie flopped her head to the side. Remmy thought that little quirk was cute, she did it whenever she was confused, and it brought a smile to his lips even now. “I wouldn’t lie to you about something like that. He’s at least eight and a half.”

Remmy saw Avo eyeing him. He grabbed the top of his shorts defensively. He wasn’t letting another random girl pants him to find out how big his dick was, not again. At least not in public. She whistled around her lollipop and addressed Remmy. “If she’s not lying maybe I’ll have to borrow you for a bit this weekend.”

“Dear god, Avo,” Was all he could manage. That sent the rest of the pack off again, with only Remmy covering his face, and Charlie looking on in confusion. God must have heard Remmy because, as if by divine intervention, Al and V walked into the lobby.

“Everyone here? Good.” He cracked his neck, and shook himself a little, clearly still not awake either. He had abandoned his normal sweat pants and stained tank top for a band t-shirt that looked tight on him, and a pair of jeans. V had gone whole hog on her outfit, and looked like she was about to go on safari. The ensemble worked though. The pair perused the piles and piles of packs the pack had pre-prepared. Al’s gaze came to Wolter and Anneke who waved at him from their slumped positions, iced coffees still in hand.

“What did I tell you two about packing light?” Al’s voice was gruff today, gruffer than usual.

“This is light,” Shot back Wolt, faux offended by the question.

“Two cases,” Al held up fingers for emphasis. “And no toys, I don’t want to hear that shit.”

“Two cases?!” Annie exploded up from her seat, looking ready to fight the world. “That’s barely going to be enough for the weekend!”

“It was going to be each, but if I hear one more thing it’s going to be total.” That shut the twins up, and they rushed off, dragging bags back to their room to repack while everyone else started manhandling stuff to the car.

Al had come up with a van from somewhere. The paint job looked like it predated fire, and the van was not much better. Al swore up and down Pack Street that it was a classic and that he’d gotten a sweet deal. The bench seating left a lot to be desired, seat belts or padding, for starters, and the van was sized for Al, meaning that it dwarfed all the other animals except V and Betty. Even then, the stuff that they did have barely fit, and when the twins showed back up, their bags had to go in between the seats, where people would normally have put their feet.

Finally, they were ready to go, but something had been nagging at Remmy, and he just couldn’t hold it back anymore. “You know, Al, I never pegged you as a fan of The Mountain Magulabi.”

“Who?”

Remmy pointed at Al’s shirt. “The shirt you’re wearing, I have one just like it. They’re an indie band. I was actually looking for it because it’s big on me, but fits with my wool, but I wasn’t able to find it for the trip…”

Al and Remmy stared at one another for a couple moments, both going over the conversation in their heads. Last week they had done laundry at the same time by coincide, and Remmy had wiped out on the stairs, sending his clothes all over Al’s stuff. They both spoke at once.

“I’ll return it when we get back, after I wash it, of course.”

“Don’t worry about it right now, it kind of works on you.”

The two broke eye contact as V giggled. Marty appeared from nowhere, a grin as wide as his head plastered on.

“Sorry Avo, looks like Al beat you to the punch on this one.”

“What?” She replied.

“He’s been in Remmy’s clothes for at least a week!”

Ozzy fucking lost it as Al pinched the bridge of his nose and V sighed good-naturedly.

‘This is going to be a long fucking trip,’ Thought Remmy.

 

The alpha wolf and the hornless ram had agreed to share the driving duties earlier in the week, as long as Al bought the hand lamps for everybody. Al took first shift, and the seating arrangement had him, V, and Betty in the front bench, Betty calling shotgun as soon as she heard they were all taking one car. Behind them was Remmy, Charlie, and Avo, although Remmy desperately wished someone else had gotten next to Charlie, because she was more than happy to give Avo all the information she could possibly want about their sexual escapades. Finally, in the largest back bench were Annie next to Wolt next to Ozzy. Marty didn’t really need bench space, so he was floating around the back somewhere, trying not to get squished between the bodies of the bigger animals. This turned into a boon as he discovered that he could burrow through the various bags down to the cooler, where, with a bit of help from Ozzy pulling on the bag that was on top, he could pop the lid, slip in, and pull out cans.

“Should you be drinking and driving?” Betty wondered aloud as Remmy handed up a beer for Al.

“No,” Replied Al.

“If you crash, I want you to die knowing I told you so.”

“Noted.”

“Oh, try to relax, it’s a vacation!” V shouted. She was on her second beer herself, and had insisted that both wolves open their windows, so she had to be loud to be heard over the blowing wind.

“Yo, can we get some tunes back here?” Ozzy called up, “Good thing I packed cassettes,” The last part could only be heard by his fellow residents of the third seat, who sniggered with him.

“Get me something to take a road trip to, Oz.” Replied Al.

Ozzy fished through the black plastic container he had stuffed next to the twin’s bags. “Uh, we got mostly oldies in here.” He pulled out a cassette, examining it front and back for label, then putting it back in when he found none. He rifled through the rest, calling out what he found. “I got Def Leopard, Buffalo Springfield, Lionel Richie, Fleetwood Yak, and Bugloaf on offer.”

“Bugloaf!” Shouted V, “I haven’t heard Bugloaf in forever!”

“Hand it up then.” Said Al.

“Please not Bugloaf,” Complained the twins, “Don’t do this to us, Ozzy.”

Ozzy shrugged and passed the cassette to the front row. “Gotta do what the big man says.”

V popped it in and skipped around until she heard a familiar riff, then a swinging piano. The rest of the animals recognized it too. “Please god, if you can hear me, blow out one of our tires and let us have to abandon ship before he starts singing.” Prayed Wolt.

“Amen.” Agreed Annie.

The animalistic sounds of Bugloaf blasted through the forty year old sound system, it seemed it had been designed exactly for this song, and exactly to torment the aardwolves.

V was dancing in the front seat, third beer in hand. “Turn it up Al!”

He did.

“Wolt, remember when I wanted to throw myself off that bridge when we were sixteen?”

“Yes, Annie.”

“Do you ever regret stopping me?”

“If I knew this was going to happen to me I would have joined you.”

“At least we agree on something.”

“WE WERE BARELY SEVENTEEN AND WE WERE BARELY DRESSED!” The rest of the animals in the van shouted, drowning them out.

 

It was dark before they stopped for lunch, a Bug Burga next to a gas station in a little no-name town that was mostly closed ski shops. Remmy took over driving at that point, rotating him and Charlie up, with Al and V going back to the second row. The pack had taken one look at Betty in the passenger’s position and just let her have shotgun for the rest of the trip. She had the map, after all.

“V, you’re on my tail again.”

“Oh, sorry, Avo.” V shifted, almost having to sit on Al’s lap, the big wolf taking up nearly half the bench himself.

Bugloaf had played himself out shortly after lunch, and he was replaced by a Guess Who track list that Ozzy recommended, but was unheard of by the other animals. It was half rocking, half chill, and didn’t make the aardwolves want to tear their eyes out, so it was what got played. Remmy had to turn it down quite a bit from the previous volume, though, to hear Betty’s directions. They were fully in the mountains now, and one wrong turn meant they would get lost or go off a cliff. Remmy hit a pot hole in the darkness, sending the unsecured preds flying.

“Sorry guys,” He apologized.

“You made me drop my book light.” Mumbled Marty from somewhere in the back. He had been reading the day away, and had found himself a little clip-on springy LED thing for when the actual light went. He mumbled something else about the ram, but Remmy pretended not to hear.

“Ugh, I need something to settle that burga.” Said Betty, shifting back and forth, trying to find a comfortable spot to nurse her lunch. “This is why I don’t eat at that grease joint.”

“Hey!” Shouted Annie from the back, “Don’t talk shit about my Bug Burga!”

 “This camping trip now sponsored by Bug Burga,” Piped in Avo, full smirk on, “Try our double roach deluxe, only sixteen thousand calor-“

“Hold on!” Remmy called as he swerved to avoid another hole. There was a distinct clonk as Avo and V’s heads met with force.

“Jesus, Remmy! Watch the road.” Avo’s complaint snaked out between her teeth as she rubbed the sore spot on the left temple.

“Please, Remmy, do try to use caution.” V’s rebuke was no less cutting for its refinement.

“I’m doing all I can.” He mumbled back. Charlie patted his leg, and tried a cheering smile. The road was the worst any of them had ever encountered, made almost entirely of pot holes, washed out runs, and stones that made driving half luck, half breaking your thumbs when the wheels shot out from under you. It was nothing like Zootopia’s almost immaculate transportation system, whose main problem was jaywalkers.

“God, V, why is your head so hard?” Avo asked, a hint of anger slipping into her pointed question.

The doe shrugged, “Deer’s primary defensive mechanism used to be their antlers, the females just inherited the hard skulls.”

“Does that mean next time you hit me I can bite you?”

“Avo,” Grumbled Al, clearly not liking where this was going.

“Joke, just a joke,” Avo said, her face still in a grimace.

Betty pulled out a cigarette and lit it, taking a long drag and blowing it into the closed window beside her.

“Could you crack that a little?” Asked Charlie.

“What? Oh shit, yeah, sorry.” Betty rolled down the window, letting the cold air pull the smoke away into the night. She finished the cig, extinguished the butt on the side of the van, and dropped it onto the road. She still wasn’t sitting right, though. “Marty, you find anything stronger in that cooler?” She called out.

“The coke’s from cactus country, so it’s probably at least five percent actual cocaine.” The stoat offered from his nest atop of the pile of bags.

“Mmm, maybe just another beer then.”

“You know,” Started Annie, “We didn’t pack only clothes.”

Al raised a low rumble of annoyance. “And we’re sharing, Al! Let me finish sometime.”

“That’s what she said.” The zip of an opening bag stopped dead as everyone turned towards the flush and slightly wobbly V. Then all eyes were on Al. Then on V. Remmy stared straight ahead, trying to ignore Charlie’s and Betty’s faces in his peripheral. She hiccupped, then tried for finger guns, which would have been a feat with hooves at the best of times. “Heyoo.”

Al let out a brief chuckle, the pack relaxed instantly. Ozzy burst out for the third time today, from actual amusement or nervousness this time, no one would ever know. Probably a bit of both though.

Annie breathed a sigh of relief and reached into her pack, pulling out a bottle. “Cheap and shitty vodka, my friends, man and woman’s most faithful companion.” Wolt had magiced some plastic cups into his hands, and a couple liters of tonic water into his lap. “So, who wants in?”

Everyone except Remmy took a cup, and soon the party atmosphere had returned, which effected Remmy primarily in that now he had to keep shouting at Betty to give him directions every five minutes. After only six false turns and almost rear-ending a forest ranger jeep parked in the middle of the road, Remmy arrived at what Al had marked as the camping site.

“There’s no more road.” Remmy flicked the high beams on again. In front of him was an endless expanse of trees. To the left, trees. To the right? A slope upwards, covered in, you guessed it, giant cherubs in gold relief. That looked exactly like trees.

Al stretched as the animals piled out of the car. “Of course, we have to hike up to the lake from here.”

It was pitch black, and almost every animal was stumbling from the vodka tonics. “I see literally no way this could go wrong,” Said the very sober Remmy.

“Here, grumpy,” Charlie pushed the rest of her drink into his unresisting hooves and he downed it two gulps, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm.

“Alright, gang, lights on, don’t lose track of the person in front or behind you, and if you fall, make some noise.” Al said to the assembled. Unpacking the van was a lot easier than filling it up had been. After Marty bemoaned the necessity of two trips, each animal undertook the grocery challenge. Which is when you try to carry all your bags into your house at once, regardless of how heavy or numerous they actually are. The slope wasn’t steep, and there was a winding path up it. The path was hard packed dirt, and had accumulated a lot of undergrowth since the last people had been here. The pack set out in single file up it.

“Aw, shit, that hurt!” Wolt yelped.

“Bad?” Betty called to him.

“Stepped on a pinecone.”

“Keep moving you big baby.”

“Yes, mom.”

“And shut up.”

Remmy saw the lake before he stepped into it, but just barely. He ground the sand between his hooves. Real sand. Not that fake shit they had in Sahara Square. It felt like he’d stepped into wet cement, but in a good way. It was cool, a little wet, and the texture was all across the board, from little sharp bits, to round smooth rocks. It felt good just to hold, or push your toes into.

“I think this is it.” Charlie’s light bobbed next to him, illuminating the lake like a moonbeam. Waves from the wind blew up against the shore they were on, occasionally interrupted by ripples further into the water. The breeze was directed towards Remmy and Charlie, but it was a soft, cool thing, not like air conditioning at all, it was like what air conditioning was always yearning towards, and never quite reached.

Setting up camp was a task and a half, with manuals brought out, turned upside down, righted again, then finally thrown away in disgust. Axes were used as hammers, stoats were used as measuring sticks, and all the firewood in the close forest got dumped onto the beach. It was a full hour before the tents were up, and some select larger logs and been arranged in a crude circle around a space cleared of forest refuse, and walled by rocks. The dry logs and handfuls of pine needles went into the circle, then more wood, then more needles.

Betty lit the pile, blowing on it gently to coax it to life. She soon had a pleasantly large fire going, and the tired animals basked in the glow. Avo broke out a flat iron and shoved it over the fire, where Al got to work cooking up some processed bug patties he had prepared the previous night.

“This ain’t so bad.” Commented Remmy to Charlie as they enjoyed their burgers, sitting in their camp chairs, feet barely kissed by the tallest of the lake’s minute waves.

“Peaceful,” Agreed Charlie. She held out a paw and he took it, the two just let the connection swing between their chairs. Remmy leaned in to whisper some sweet nothing to her when Annie’s strangled choke caused them both to jump.

“I can’t believe this!” She bemoaned, “I finally get signal out here in this god-forsaken forest, and the only match on Timber in fifty miles is my own brother!”

“Did you swipe right?” Marty snarked from his place beside the fire. He had set up his entire camp in the lee of the log that Al was using as a seat.

“Well, duh.” Replied Annie.

“Uh-oh,” Said Wolt.

“What?” Said Annie.

“Don’t hate me.”

“Why would I hate you?”

“I swiped left.”

“I’LL KILL YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKER.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, I will be updating Friday mornings. Also, I finally figured out what /ztg/ refers to, so prepare to be heavily lurked.


	3. Betty's Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty arises to a world full of shining possibilities, bright, happy visages, and a pristine, unsullied new outlook on life. Then she goes back to sleep because fuck all that noise sideways over a barrel. She forces herself to get up eventually, and discovers the rare pleasure of a stolen moment of solitude to finally rethink just how she got to where she is today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's really long, but it has an okay break point in the middle if you don't feel like smashing against this wall of text all at once.

The camping trip was a stupid fucking idea. Worse, it was V’s stupid idea. That damn deer had come into the pack like a wrecking ball. I could barely stand her when she was just Ozzy’s therapist. I mean, she didn’t pull a Remmy and try to get into a fight with every member of the pack, but, gaah, now I’m just making myself angry. She was down to earth, pretty, and always full to bursting of nothing but good intentions. I could see why Al liked her; didn't mean I had to too. The most infuriating thing was that this whole damn thing was probably for our own good. Personally, I think it’s a waste of everyone’s time and money, but I didn’t get a say. Al had been the one to propose it, not her. If the alpha says something’s happening, you make sure everyone agrees, that’s what a beta does. Pack solidarity and all that bullshit.

Roughing it on the trip was an equally stupid fucking idea, but I only had myself and my goddamn ego to blame for that one. Despite sleeping on a ground made of sharp rocks that all seemed to be actively trying to find the softest part of my back to stab me in, I had drifted off last night without fanfare. Thanks be to Annie for that one, I suppose, my own personal dispenser of cocktails. Probably should have watched her mix ‘em, because I feel like that time I chugged a liter of the clear stuff to prove Avo wrong when she said I couldn’t. I think I’m going to hurl, but I can hold it back long enough to begin wanting to die instead. I can’t die right now though, I’ll need one final cigarette first. I don’t smoke in bed, not after I almost burnt down my apartment, but a sleeping bag under a tarp supported by scavenged sticks hardly counted as a bed.

I checked my phone, 5:00 in the afternoon. Still technically late afternoon, normally I wouldn’t be awake for another three hours. A happy little beam poked around my feet and blinded me, hopefully permanently. God I hate the sun. I pull out a pair of sunglasses and slam ‘em on. It helps, a little. I should probably get up. Don’t wanna.

I get up anyway, stretch, and find out just where the hell we ended up. Little sandy beach on a mountain lake surrounded by pine trees and mountains, water’s so clear you can see the bottom a hundred yards out. Slap it on a postcard and make a million dollars.

Had someone lit a fire? Wait, yeah, that had been me. Fuck, last night was a blur. I poked about the ash with a stick, trying to find a red bit of heat to… To do what? I had looked up how to make a fire two nights ago and now I’m out here at way too fucking early, trying to restart it like I was raised by suicidal trees. I’m not the goddamn expert here. Hell, I don’t even want to be here! I threw the stick into the pit in disgust. It’s somewhere in the seventies anyway, we came out here to escape the heat, remember? Not make more of it.

My phone beeps at me. God, just, fuck, not now. I know I don’t have reception, so it’s not a text, or a notification. I also know I set an alarm for 5:15 to go running. I know this because I promised myself I’d go for one in the goddamn wilderness like the fucking hippie asshole I always secretly wanted to be. I wish I had a better reason to do to this other than I didn’t want to. Forcing myself to do things I didn’t want to do is how I kept sane.

I grab a granola bar from my pack for breakfast. I’m omnivorous enough to let myself enjoy them. It’s mostly honey anyway, and that’s an animal byproduct, kind of. It counts. God, stop arguing with yourself.

I can’t taste shit, mouth feels like sandpaper. I drain half of one of Oz’s water jugs and hook the handle through my belt. I’ll need it later when I inevitably wipe out, and throw up all over the beach. I haven’t run in a long goddamn time, and by long goddamn time I mean since high school. I wasn’t a fucking nerd on the track team though, so stop fantasizing I was, brain.

Stretch the legs, make sure you don’t rip a tendon, chug some more water. Light another cig and smoke it so fast you could have mistaken it for one of those novelty ones you eat. Fuck I hate those. Why pretend to be a dependent, when you could just actually kill yourself slowly day in, day out? Guess people still think it’s cool.

A low groan behind me, and the shifting scratch of sleeping bag vinyl means someone’s stirring in camp. Okay, let’s Sherlock this shit out so I can figure out if I want to ditch whoever’s waking up. Al and V are in the big tent, but it’s quiet. Annie and Wolt have their pagoda thing, and they’re not gonna be awake for a couple hours. Remmy and Charlie are also sharing, and, yeah, Ozzy was bunking with them, none of them are early birds, so check that one off. Marty’s entire camp was a square foot by the bonfire, and I think he just had a pile of napkins for his mattress, no sleeping bag. Which meant that Avo had that little green pop-up, and that was definitely her voice cursing existence in general, mystery solved.

I take off before I have a chance at conversation. Yeah, Avo was my friend, probably best friend, really, but sometimes you just say fuck it all, and today I didn’t want to see another living creature until my head cleared. I hope someone brought coffee, because that camp is going to be a shit show when people do get going.

Left pad, right pad, left pad, right pad. Easy to fall back into habits. Left pad, right pad. Jump the wash. Left pad, find the dry rock in the creek. Right pad, stretch for the leap. Left, onto the dirt. Right, off the pebbles. Left, breathe in. Right, breathe out. Left, in. Right, out. In. Out. In. Out.

Watch what’s in front of you. Left, right. Over the log, under the trees. In, out. Don’t think about how much you need another pull. Left. Don’t think about the distance. Right. Think about the next step. In. Concentrate on evening your breaths. Out. Don’t hyperventilate. Left, SHIT-

Catch yourself, recover, fight through the stitch in your side. Use your paws, get on all fours, you can’t outrun your problems but you can sure as hell try.

Just repeat, just continue, just keep running, just do. Stop thinking so goddamn much, Betty.

I was on the other side of the lake when I had to stop. I don’t know how long or far I ran. Must have been awhile, because the camp was just multicolored dots on the far shore from here. I grabbed for my pack. A hit would just end up choking me out, but you gotta go into round 3 with your head held high, even if your tail’s between your legs. I should really stop smoking these, or at least, like, switch over to weed now that it’s legal. I’ve tried to quit before, I really have, but something always fucks it up.

Can’t quit if you get dumped, how else you gonna meet people? Can’t quit if you get sick, the stress will just make it worst. Can’t quit if you wake up late for work, or you can barely remember how to walk, or when it's four in the morning and snowing sideways, because you just ain’t making it to tomorrow without another one. Yeah I’m justifying, fuck off.

I wanted to throw this ball and chain into the lake. Some guy I met at a bar once told me that’s how he quit. Just came out to some place as fucking tranquil and beautiful as this, and just got a feeling. Well, asshole, I got a feeling too, and that feeling is I need another fucking smoke.

God, why was I so pissed off today? Relax, Betty, you are literally on vacation. Deep breaths, massage the pain out of your calves. Paws were raw as all hell too, hadn’t run on them in forever. Never was one for that sort of shit. Sure, you could go faster, but it’s just not good for your psyche. Gotta keep your head screwed on if you want to survive in the city. Only people who make it by living the feral lifestyle are retired jocks like Al who think they have something to prove, or people who wind up on the six o’clock news after chasing their tail into the front end of a bus. I guess the latter don’t really count as making it then. Heh. I’m funny, shut up.

God, fuck Al. I don’t even need a specific reason to say that, he’s my alpha. Fuck alphas. Fuck the pack. Fuck pack politics. Fuck this goddamn lake, and these goddamn trees, and the goddamn sunset that’s turning everything goddamn fucking orange. Fuck.

Fourth stick of the day, and I’m finally feeling better. Calm down, Betty, get your mind off those assholes. I tossed a couple stones into the lake. Yeah, fuck you, stones. Man, now I’m just being a child. But that’s your problem, you know? Can’t let yourself do something childish, someone might see and question your authority.

AND you think too much. You always just keep on thinking, and thinking, and you just go and think yourself into a corner because that’s what you do, you fucking think, and double guess, and question everything, especially yourself. No one would care if they saw you throwing stones. Well, that’s not true. You’d care, and you can never get out of sight of you.

Fifth smoke of the day won’t make much difference for my health, but it’ll do wonders for my personality. Counting ‘em out like this makes me realize just how many I was burning through. Usually don’t need a second until lunch time, and it was barely breakfast, must be the mountain air disagreeing with me. The good news is I packed nearly a carton for this, so at least running out ain’t gonna be a problem.

I found a nice big rock to sit down on. My legs had half a dozen scrapes all over them from my cutting through the underbrush, but they’d be fine. Hit ‘em with a few shots from the spray-on antiseptic I had at camp, and I’d be right as rain. Okay, so maybe Al hadn’t fucked up everything. Putting me in charge of medical was his only smart idea. Which meant it was probably V’s.

Man, V walked back into Al’s life just when he needed her. The savage epidemic would have killed him from the worry, if he didn’t get shot first. The police said they were targeting big animals to spread chaos. If they had hit Al when he was at work, ugh, I don’t even wanna think about it. Pandora was already a nightmare made real, but she had the physique of a business mogul, not a body builder. A roided-up Al going savage on the pack, though? We’d be toast.

None of us got out of the scare unscathed. When Dora got hit, Charlie and Avo could barely take it, no one could, but they got hit the worst. Don’t know too many specifics about the others, but the stress must have done a number on them too. I got an ulcer from that fucking conspiracy. A fucking ulcer! I’m thirty-fucking-one and I’m bleeding internally because I worried too much about the pack. Had to put on a brave face, though. That’s what being the alpha and beta is about, brave faces to lead the pack, and nurture the young.

Heh. Kind of funny, now that I think about it. That’s what most people forget about pack dynamics. Back in the bad old days packs didn’t just pretend at being family units, they actually were. Alpha was the father, beta the mother, literally, and the leadership was spread between them.

Nowadays it’s been simplified to the gang boss and his softer left hand. Okay, yeah, self, sometimes I do mother the pack. Can’t just throw the sick onto the street, it’d be barbaric. Nothing a bowl of soup and a “Put your goddamn coat on next time, idiot,” Can’t fix though.

Huh, that’s really the extent of my duties, now that V’s here. I used to have to kick people’s asses about paying rent, or going to work, or getting their busking cup stolen. Now? Fuck, I don’t even have to do the part where I get a mental read on each pack member, see if they’re hiding something from the rest of us.

That’s probably more to do with how everything’s cooled down, though. After the riots stopped, the city really did feel calmer than it had before. I guess the whole world just took a step back and a deep breath.

I tried the deep breath myself. Normally that would be a piss-poor idea in the city, where some smell is always coming along to fuck up your nostrils. Here, though? It wasn’t so bad.

I took another few sniffs at the air. Most of my sense of smell had been shot since I picked up the habit, but I had been given more than most to begin with. Pine trees smelled nothing like the cleaner, which often smelled like piss anyway. The trees smelled like, like something that was hard to put into words. It’s said that wolves used to think in smells, forgoing the higher cognitive functions to follow their noses. We don’t do that anymore, but we still find trouble articulating how our nose is just as important as our eyes.

This place smells green, and fresh, and crisp. Not like you just bit into an apple, but like when you break a stick of celery in half. There’s water in the air, and it smells clean. I thought the trees would be sweeter, but they’re almost sour. You can get hints of rotting underbrush when you stick your nose right into the ferns and needles, but even that is somehow pleasant. It’s not the decay of death, hell, it’s almost entirely odorless, like mushrooms. That’s probably what it is, now that I think about it.

 I want to just lump everything under earthy, but that doesn’t do it justice. I’m letting the smells of the forest guide me. I feel a little light-headed, probably accidentally hyperventilating, but fuck it, my body hasn’t felt this good in years and I close my eyes to concentrate on my surroundings. Somewhere far to my left is the buzz of insects, to the right, some stream gurgling like a happy pup. The splash of the lake as fish jump, the tiny whooshing sound of the minute waves hitting the pebbles. Above it all though, is a constant rumble, or, I guess a tinkle? They should have sent Marty if they wanted a poetic description.

It’s the sound of the wind in the trees, and the needles hitting each other, and falling like ballerinas in pairs to the ground. Accompanying it is the soft pat of my pads, the scratch of my jeans against themselves, the rattling of the loose cigs in their pack. My own breathing, it’s usually almost a wheeze, a fight in and out, but it’s even now. I literally can’t remember a time when I didn’t have to put effort into this. Holy shit.

I put a blind paw in the water and it jerks me out of my revelry. I reluctantly open my eyes to the day, and-

The lake is a blazing golden circle in front of me, so bright I can’t see the other side. It’s like I’m standing on the shore of a primordial disc of fire, from which all other light could only wish to steal a semblance. Far in front and above me is the deep purple of night. Behind, the warm pinks and oranges of sunset. I take my shades off, and the colors burst into even more vivid hues. It’s like a painter had prepared this sight for me alone, the whole sky their glorious canvas. Streaks of colors dance and sparkle, washing between each other as the clouds shift.

Stars begin to pop out one by one from behind those same clouds, adding white dots to the deepening dark. No moon yet, but I bet it’s going to be the biggest, whitest, fullest, best goddamn moon I’ll ever see. Could it possibly be anything else in this place? Maybe those hippie assholes who live in tents miles from anyone else have a point after all. I could deal with a longer walk to the store if it meant I get to see this every night.

Awe. That’s the word that someone like Marty probably would have used. Maybe backing it up with some bullshit about how this should make us feel small, and insignificant, and just put it all in perspective. Fuck that noise, this is just the best goddamn light show on earth.

The stars just wouldn’t stop coming, and when the sun finally did dip below the horizon, the light from above made me wonder why I had ever even cared it was there.

Millions, and millions, and millions of stars, all in a mass that stretched as far as I could see. That must be the galaxy. I’d seen artistic interpretations before, one in a high school science class I failed because I had work when I was supposed to be studying, and the odd picture on the side of a van owned by a guy who wanted me to get into them. Those hack jobs were fucking nothing compared to this. I wiped my eyes and nose on my sleeve. I was tearing up, and it was worth it. I think I could just sit there, looking up at that swirling infinity forever.

Everything could fit up there. Me, my ego and all its dumb attached strings, the pack, hell, even all of Zootopia. For each star there could be a Zootopia! Maybe more! Holy fuck, I am not nearly high enough to truly appreciate this.

I finally look down, blinking hard to clear my vision as it swims with more tears. This is the happiest I’ve been since I heard that the conspiracy was over, maybe even happier than that. That was just worry being removed, which is negative happiness. This was the real stuff. It felt good, ha, of course being happy feels good! You just never let yourself feel it!

I get up, take a step, and immediately smash my little toe into a rock.

“FUCK!” I shouted it as loud as I could without even realizing. Goddamnit, now the neighbors are going to hear, and call the landlord again, and… And the neighbors are two hundred miles away. The landlord is two hundred miles away, so are the cops, and noise ordinances, and curfews, and my goddamn thin walls.

“Fuck!” I shout again. No response, not even an echo. I laugh, a big belly laugh that gets louder as it goes until I’m wheezing for breath. I grab the rock that hurt me and fling it out over the lake. It skips. Oh man, that takes me back. I used to love skipping rocks at the park, back before I got old and responsible. Within a minute I had turned my lamp on and was down on all fours, grabbing any rock even vaguely flat or smooth, dumping everything I grabbed onto my seat. I hurled each stone with more force. With each splash I remembered a little more about my form and how to put a spin on them and which ones were keepers and which ones you could just throw away without care.

“Woooo!” I yelled, jumping up and down as a rock skipped four, five, and then six times before sinking beneath the water. Fuck, I love being loud! “Take this, lake!” I shout as I hurl the biggest rock I can carry in. It only flies a couple feet, and the splash is enough to soak me. It’s cold, and refreshing and goddamn does it make me feel alive.

I rush off into the woods. I want to climb something, go exploring, run a mile, do a dance, have a one night stand with the first animal I see, I don’t know! I don’t care! Ha! A grin must have been plastered on my face as I ran. I hopped onto a downed tree and used it as a balancing board, jumping gracefully back and forth. Another thing I hadn’t done since high school. I come to a cleared line, and see something dark in the grass. There’s a train track here, which means that it leads somewhere. It’s overgrown as all hell, but easy to follow. I grab a stone and scratch it. Marked side, left, unmarked side, right, I throw it high into the air. Mark, I dash off left.

Trees rush to blurs in my vision as I run, and shout, and laugh, and trip, and tumble, and just fucking enjoy myself like everything was okay.

I finally stop for breath as I reach a station by the side of the tracks. It’s a big cleared area filled with old buildings. There was once a sign on the boardwalk, but the paint probably wore off a hundred years ago. I reach for my cigs out of habit. I pull my paw back. I shouldn’t need one if I was smoking my normal amount, and I actually don’t need one right now. I don’t feel like I’m going to need them for a long time, but I’m not stupid enough to throw ‘em away. This is temporary, but something I can learn from.

I take a seat on the wooden planks that would have been the loading area of the train. Was this a small town once? What happened out here? My mind fills with possibilities about where I was, and what was here. Who lived here? Was the conductor a pred or prey? Did it matter? Who sold the tickets? What did they do for fun? I’ll admit it, I was actually having fun, a rare thing for me, I know.

I think not needing a smoke right now was a release thing. Like, those uptight bankers who have to wear suits all day, and make decisions that can make or break thousands of people’s fortunes. They live their entire work lives in constant stress. When they get home though, they drink, smoke, do cocaine, and have the freakiest sex. I guess you can’t be high strung all the time, despite the fact that I tried my hardest to always be on duty. That’s what nicotine is good for, relaxing you for two minutes, just long enough to keep from throttling your boss with a pipe wrench, or throwing a mouthy stoat out a second floor window.

I guess now that I didn’t have to put on appearances, I didn’t need that release. I didn’t have to worry about Avo or Marty seeing me jumping around like an idiot and making fun of me for the rest of forever, or Remmy seeing me skipping stones and going for a pack bonding moment. I was actually alone out here. I hadn’t been actually alone for a real long time. Even the voice in the back of my head that chided me when I let my breaks go thirty seconds long, or I had an extra glass of wine with dinner, was completely silent. Was this what it was like inside the heads of normal people?

Huh. No wonder seven out of the nine animals I live with are so fucking chill all the time. It was so different than how it was growing up. Being around anyone who wasn’t constantly ready for a fight was a goddamn Christmas miracle to me.

The pack was my family now. If you’re born into a shit hole like Pack Street, you’re getting a 7-2 off-suit, right off the bat. That’s why we made packs again, not just so we, the civilians, would have someone to watch our backs against the gangs and the turf wars, but so that we could actually feel like families. Families we made, and chose. Sure, my pack was like holding a pair of threes and shit else, but it’s better than what I started with. A lot better.

And V. Damnit, man, now I’m back here. I’m think I’m finally feeling up to puzzling this shit show out now. Having V around should be nice. More time for me to actually live my life. I went on three dates last month. Three! That’s more than I’ve gone on in the past two years. Nothing came of ‘em, but actually leaving the apartment for something that wasn’t work was nice.

I shouldn’t expect to meet a dreamboat off the bat, hell, I’d settle for a rowboat at this point. Face the facts, Betty, you’re not a pretty lady, and you don’t have a nice personality, and you think people getting hit in the nuts is the epitome of humor. I guess I just want a little appreciation now and then. I’m not one of those ego freak queens that needs to be worshiped like a goddess, but sometimes, I don’t know. A “Thanks for staying with me while I was sick and making sure I didn’t die,” would be nice to hear.

A big part of my lovin’ problem is I don’t even know who I want to bounce anymore. When I was in high-school I went after big, alpha motherfuckers like Al. Now that I’ve had to live near one for years, I think I’d rather kill myself than get into bed with ‘em. After high school, when I first moved out, there was that cute barista that I’m pretty sure was hitting on me. Couldn’t ever talk to her, though, always tongue tied when she turned around and flashed me those yoga pants. Jaguarondis, man, that must be rainforest slang for a full size allotment of hot stuffed into a four foot frame.

Recently though? I’d personally describe it as a train wreck on fire. First was a joke date with Avo, just to get my toes wet again. That night was fun as hell, wouldn’t hurt me to hang out more now that I have the free time. Second date was one of Remmy’s friends from the gym. I’m pretty sure he was gay though, and just there because Remmy was black mailing him into doing it. Maybe he’s into Remmy? Ha, that’d be hilarious. I don’t really see what people find attractive in that ram. He’s as much fun to hang out with as a dead body, and he knows two jokes, one of which is funny.

He’s got a nice face, though, and there’s the novelty factor of the whole sheep thing. Of course, if his dick is as big as Charlie swears it is, I could see why she’s stuck with him. Those two really helped each other out, whether or not they know it. He used to jump at me looking at him, now he only jumps if you actually sneak up behind him, which is still easy and hilarious, but he’s cool about it. And Charlie? Man, that girl had some issues. Sheep are basically fluffy rocks though, and being around one for any length of time will mellow anyone out. When I put it like that, yeah, I can totally see why she’s into him. Tcha, guess I missed that bandwagon. Hmmm. Heh. Ah, I can’t believe I’m thinking this, but maybe next time they get into enough of a fight that they have a break week I’ll see about enticing that ram into my pasture for some rebound sex.

Pfft, ha ha. I crack myself up sometimes. Wait, is that? Oh goddamnit, that actually got me a little excited. Fuck that stupid sexy ram. Maybe I’ll find a different one to go out with. Didn’t Marty say he was experimenting with cross-diet divide dating a couple months ago? Yeah, he was super wasted, and he looked so embarrassed afterwards. Ha! That was fucking classic. I’ll have to bring it up later. Oh shit, that’ll probably just get a rise out of him. Hmmm. Got to be diplomatic, gotta make it clear I’m not just making fun of him for doing the thing I’m considering doing. That would be hypocritical. Fun, but super hypocritical.

Goddamnit, I guess I like V after all. She made us come out here, she’s made Al the happiest he’s ever been, and she’s improving the lives of everyone. I’m just comparing her to myself, and seeing all the places she’s doing perfect, where I was able to barely keep my head above water. I guess a college education in helping the poor and disenfranchised has its uses.

Aight, that’s enough jacking off my own ego for now, let’s see what this dilapidated ghost town is all about!

The moon had finally risen, and as I predicted, it’s the size of a pumpkin in the sky, so bright I almost don’t need my hand lamp. The town I found doesn’t really look like a town, what with there being only six buildings in total. Couple of long and low constructions shaped like long cabins were closest to me, then two matching pairs of huge sheds. Two of them are right by the river. None of them look particularly hospitable. Roofs keep rain off, they don’t need to keep the people happy. I enter one of the buildings that’s set back, closer the forest.

It’s dusty, dark, full of spiderwebs, and, oh shit, heavy machinery, a lot of it, old stuff too. Carts are piled up against a wall, with cables and ties next to them in huge piles. The other corner is filled safety equipment, hard hats so old and dented they looked like they’ve gone to war. Nothing younger than me, hell, probably nothing younger than my grandma. I think this place must have been a lumber mill.

The buildings nearest the river confirmed my suspicion. Each one had a vertical saw that was at least ten feet tall, with a walkway and flume built up all around it. There was an accompanying giant spoke over the river, which I guess must have held a waterwheel at some point. If I had to take a guess at why this place was abandoned, that river was at the top of my list. It was only a trickle now, enough to feed the lake, but not enough to power a mill. I take a sniff around, sawdust, old grease, rusted metal, I haven’t used my nose like this in forever, and even with the euphoria from before, I’m still relearning stuff that should be innate.

The dust was a pleasant brown in my mind, it smelled like a dude in flannel. Not that I would know what that smells like. Downtown trash puss ain’t exactly popular with uptown hipsters, who are the only guys who wear flannel now. Maybe I’m into lumberjacks? There I go again, I really need to get my head out of this relationship haze. The grease was too acrid to spend a lot of time investigating, and the metal was so rusted it smelled like someone was bleeding out directly in front of me. It was a pretty unpleasant surprise, considering I was expecting car exhaust. In retrospect, that was pretty dumb, though. City metal smells like fumes because it’s the car you’re smelling, not a one way ticket to tetanus shots.

The last two buildings were the log cabin looking things. Windows smashed in, doors gone, hell, the roof had caved in on one of them. I’ll explore the one that didn’t look as fucked up, so probably wouldn’t try to kill me too hard. My light illuminates wooden bed frames, no mattresses. Workers probably slept on blankets. Black marks on the floor, smells of iron, floor is scratched to hell, in several places. Heaters and tables. Place to warm your feet, place to put your head, and place to fill your drink, only three things an animal really needs out here, I guess.

I’m just about to leave when a box under one of the bunks catches my eye. It’s definitely newer than this building, probably even this half-century. I slide it out for closer inspection. It’s black, covered in dust, only about a foot and a half long, Simple lock, more to keep it closed than to keep someone out. Two minutes with my claw and it’s open. Inside is a bunch of old photos.

Huh. They look about as old as the camp, but then why are they in this thing? The pictures are of animals and life around the camp. They’re sepia toned, and anyone who got caught in the landscape scene are long blurs. I don’t know too much about old pictures, and these were really old pictures, but I think that’s just an artifact of how they were taken. The animals were beavers, wolves, bears, and moose, all doing work at the mill. The same two beavers and big bull-moose kept popping up in image after image. Laughing, waving, or posing with each other. Probably the friends of whoever owned the camera.

Besides the work camp, there were a bunch of pictures taken inside a cave, but it was dressed up like a western pub. Here the pictures were mostly of drinking, card hands, and a red wolf. She looked like the bartender. On the backside of each picture was a date, probably when it was taken. Shuffling them into order brought a nice little tale into relief. The first pictures of the shewolf were with a group, the animals next to her wore aprons, or the hard gear of the mill. Then she’s behind the bar, holding a glass up, pretending to clean it. She looks more annoyed than anything. Her with the group of friends, her with a couple other wolves, her with some sort of fancy dress on. They went on much like this for a while. She looked happier in each subsequent one though. Then one of the beavers stopped showing up. I looked through the rest of the pictures, trying to relocate him. June 19th, 1896 was the last time he showed up, nursing a beer and looking stoically at the camera. This guy loved to be the serious one. It wasn’t an unusual picture of him, but it was the last.

The next pictures chronologically were more somber. Not sad, but, just not full of so much glee. It took almost a month for the gang to look happy again. Did he die? Get fired? Contract run out? I would never know. In total, there were a little under a hundred pictures, chronicling a year’s worth of life. The last sequence was of the bar. In each one, the camera got slightly closer to the wolf, slightly more intimate. Finally there’s a group of pictures of just the wolf. She looks so happy that her personality comes through, shielding her face in some, laughing with her mouth wide in others, a beer in one paw, a shot in the other. The newest image was of the water wheel being taken off. I guess that was the end of the mill.

The image right before that though, was an image of a brown bear, in front of an old silver mirror, looking down at his camera. The first selfie, and the only image of this guy whose life I just watched. There’s a note underneath all of them, written on modern white paper, a lot younger than the photos. Letterhead from the Old Yellow’s Pub downtown, huh. I flip it open and start reading.

_Grandpa,_

_Even when you couldn’t remember Dad’s name, you remembered this place. I can only imagine what it must have been like when you were here, the noise, and the life. Now it’s overgrown and everything’s rusted or broken. It’s so quiet, and the river that you always said kept you all up at night is dried up. The lake you used to swim in is all but gone. I’m going to keep looking for where grandma worked, but I haven’t found it yet._

_I did what you wanted. Took your old pictures up from the house, and put them back where you took them. The fourth bunk, in the shorter log house. I never could find your old camera, mom says you pawned it long ago to help open the pub, but you always said you had it around here somewhere. I wish I could have found it, even for just one more picture._

_You died on the first of April, 1967. You would have found that funny. Grandma sure did. You probably wouldn’t be happy to hear that she followed you a week later, but I know you two are together again, dancing, and drinking, and laughing at your pictures with the guys: Steven, Greg, even Ronald. I’m sure you’re with them all now, at that place you guys called the Whiskey Mountain._

_-Osito_

I put the note and pictures away, trying to put them back how I found them. I clicked the lock shut, and slid the whole thing under the wooden bunk, twitching it back and forth until it sat in the dust where it had lain for a good fifty years. I think I’ll see what’s going on back at the camp.

It was a good thirty minute walk back through the forest and around the lake. Someone had got the fire going again, but half the pack had wandered off. Marty was closest to the fire, reading. Annie and Wolt were playing catch, Al and V were getting stuff out for lunch. The rest? Probably had the same idea as me and were off on their own plans for the day.

“Betty, you’re back!” V called out to me, alerting the rest of the assembled to my presence. I grinned and waved at them.

“Just here for lunch, got a lot of walking to do if I want to hit my miles.” I replied. She nodded back at me, then hiccupped. Ha, looks like she’s been into it again. I wouldn’t have pegged V as a day drinker, but she had already proven me wrong yesterday on that front, and I’d decided that she was pretty okay, so fuck it, let her have her drinks. Not like she was driving.

Anneke wandered up, tossing the ball to herself idly. “Find anything interesting out there?” She pivoted, launched the ball at Wolter, and laughed when it beaned the other aardwolf in the head. “Sorry, bro, thought you were paying attention.” She said, a hint of sardonics playing at the edges of her words.

Wolt glared at his sister. I stifled a smile and answered her question: “Train tracks on the west side run up to an old lumber mill, but nothing too interesting.” I didn’t mention what else I had found.

“Well, as long as you had fun,” V said. “We have lunch meats and bread for sandwiches, feel free to help yourself.” Al grabbed her from behind and she squeaked, then nuzzled at him, calling him a no-good bully. I pretend to gag, and Annie snickered.

The food was fine, cold processed bug sandwiches with lettuce, fake cheese, and onion, although I skipped the tomato because it looked a little green. Marty was too engrossed in his book for conversation, which meant that the only one around for the twins to annoy besides each other was me.

“Betty,” Began Wolt, “If you were a prey species, which prey would you be?”

“What?” The question had caught me off guard, I also hadn’t ever thought about it before.

“You know, if everything else was the same, but you were born in a different body.” I don’t think the twins were getting at something, just talking ‘cause they liked hearing their voices.

I gave it about thirty seconds of thought, my mind stuck on the old photos. “Moose,” I finally said. Fuck it, sure, moose, why not?

“Huh,” Annie tapped something into her phone, probably just trying to poke me into asking about it.

“Do I dare ask why you wanted to know?”

“Oh, no reason, just wondering.” Ugh, it was going to be like that.

“Stop asking dumb questions and get me a drink.”

“Yes, mom.”

“Annie, don’t you start too.”

The hyena handed me a Screwed by Aardwolves, which in this very specific situation was the name of their own personal version of a screwdriver, made by filling a cup with vodka, then adding orange juice for color. I almost gagged when I tasted it, but fuck it, it’s alcohol, and I didn’t pay for it. I choked a couple more gulps down and waited for the buzz. When it came, I devoured the rest of my sandwich and helped myself to another. Guess a granola bar for breakfast wasn’t enough after all. Annie and Wolt had begun bothering Al instead of me, and he had shooed them off with a bit more force than I did, causing them to wrap their lunches in napkins and wander off.

“Hey guys, how’s life treatin’ yah?” Ozzy appeared out of the darkness. Marty grunted and flipped another page.

“Surprisingly well.” I said. “Camping agrees with me.” He gave me a chuckle as he grabbed a handful of bread and a couple slices of meat and just started munching, not even bothering with putting them together. He had his guitar slung on his back, and a couple sheets of paper stuffed into his pants. “Writing something?”

He shrugged, transferring his food to one hand, meat on top of bread, still not a sandwich, and pulled out his notes. “Yeah, got a little something-something coming along.” He sat down beside me. I always did like Ozzy’s original stuff, although the public at large disagreed.

“Want to run it by me?”

He chewed thoughtfully, swallowed, and then shook his head. “It’s not quite there yet, but if you stick around it just needs a couple more hours work.”

“I’ll catch it at dinner then, cool?”

“Cool.”

I always did get along with Ozzy, mostly because we both ended up spending a lot of time on our porches, him busking, me smoking. “Hey, Oz,” I started, wanting to say… I don’t know, something to the effect of thanks for being a friend, and being cool, and writing music, and just making people happy. Maybe ask him if he wanted to come over after we got back, listen to some old records, or hear him make some new ones. Hell, maybe stay for dinner and a movie. Dump his life story on me, and let me dump mine on him.

My face must have looked awful funny ‘cause the look he gave me was full of trepidation, and his voice quivered with the beginning of nervous laughter. “Yeah?”

I sighed, stood, and ruffled his fur. “Use a goddamn plate.”

He broke out into a happy laugh and licked his fingers as I stalked off, back into the night.

 

When I was safely out of sight in the woods I lit up again. Sixth one today, but first in a couple hours, so that’s more on schedule. I checked the time, normally I’d break for lunch around ten or eleven, but it was a quarter past midnight. Guess I must have lost track when I was getting lost in the woods.

I walked this time, I’d only promised myself a run when I woke up, and it was morning by no definition, so I could damn well walk if I wanted to. I followed the eastern curve of the lake, keeping above the high water mark where the forest gave way to a beach that was turning from sand to pebbles. Back where I had first stopped, on the other side, it was stony, but the camp was sand. I wonder why it’s like that. I should have asked Marty, he’d probably know. Maybe it was because of the waves, or how all the inlets were on the other side? Eh, if you don’t know, you don’t know, no point trying to figure it out when someone out there definitely does and can just tell you later.

I walked about a quarter of the way around the lake before seeing Remmy and Charlie’s lights near the water. I flashed my light on them as a joke, but it just illuminated a couple camp chairs. Time to investigate. Remmy’s fishing stuff was still here, as well as a bunch of various liquor bottles. There was a metal chain into the water upon which a couple of fish were impaled. Guess lugging all that gear up wasn’t a total waste. Now, let’s think about this. If they left everything here, including their drinks and lights, then they’re probably close, and together. Ugh. Which means they’re fucking in the bushes somewhere. I cut into the forest, careful not to make noise around any suspiciously shaking undergrowth.

I hadn’t seen Avo all day, she was probably doing the same thing I am, pretending to exercise as an excuse to wander. On second thought, she was probably actually exercising, and was using wandering off as the excuse to not have to worry about someone keeping up. Maybe we’ve passed each other without even realizing it. I’d been so caught up in my own thoughts today that I’m sure anyone could have snuck up on me. So much for the big scary beta wolf, can’t smell if she doesn’t stick her face in things, can’t hear if it’s not a rock concert, can’t taste at all. I’ve had a couple of bad milk-carton scares because of that. The pack didn’t need to know that, though.

The ground beneath me had been climbing steadily upward as I went east, and now the trees parted to reveal a rock and dirt slope. I didn’t have a destination in mind so I just went up it too. It wasn’t hard to climb, just gotta scramble when the scree tries to pull the legs out from under yah. I kept crossing a sort of path that must have gone back and forth up the slope. I had fought my way up this far, so no reason to give in and take it now, not when I can do this the hard way. About half way up I stopped for a smoke break. My calves were beginning to complain, and I’d almost twisted my ankle twice, but the view from here was even better.

I flipped open my lighter and held it out, admiring the shine of the silvery metal in the moonlight. Silver and moonlight, the city wolf’s call. Used to be snow and moonlight, but Pack Street only gets brown slush blown in from Tundra Town when their weather malfunctions, so I took up the silver. I flicked the wheel to light up and the little flame danced in the ever present breeze, going out as I got it close. I flicked it again, but it died just as fast. I sheltered it in my paws and nearly singed my nose, but I got my stick lit. I was up against a solid cliff face now, and I could watch my smoke spiral out from me. Calming. It floats over a patch of rubble about two feet to my right, and gets blasted apart.

I experimentally blew my next lungful at the point, and it too gets blown away. I felt around in the pile of rocks, there were gaps here and there, but just more rocks beyond. I flicked my lighter a few times in front of it, finding a few places where the breeze from the rocks made the flame flicker and dance. I tossed a few of the small boulders down the slope, clearing the openings. There was definitely a breeze coming from further in. I work for what must have been an hour before I had a hole large enough for my head. I’m not stupid enough to stick it in, though, and just shine my light in instead. Some kind of passage, doesn’t look like it goes too far as there’s more fallen rocks just inside. On the edge of what I can see down, there’s what looks like a plank of wood.

I put an arm in, careful not to disturb the pile, and hook a claw into the wood, pulling it towards me agonizingly slow until it was close enough to get my paw around. I pull out too fast and catch it on one of the rocks, wrenching the stone out of place. I jump back as the stack rumbles, shifts, and closes back over my hole. The slide's over in two seconds, and I probably wasn’t ever in any actual danger. Didn’t stop my heart from thumping like mad.

My prize is a long wooden board, about two feet tall and three long. It was painted once, and corners don’t appear naturally in wood, so it’s animal-made. I blow on the dust, kicking up a cloud that sends me into a hacking fit until it settles. Nice thinking, idiot. When it did finally clear there’s writing carved into the board, but it’s not legible.

So close to finding something cool. I almost wing it into the abyss but something stops me. This was carved by hand. It must have taken a huge amount of work. If it was meant to be read once, it could be read again. I guess I’m curious. Ha, haven’t been curious in a long goddamn time, got my nose swatted too many times when I was younger to have a passion for sticking it in other people’s business. I’ll take it back to camp, maybe someone will be able to translate ancient mountain runes.

I take the path back down. This flat, and this wide, it must have been intentionally dug, although it hasn’t been maintained in a while. It loops back and forth a dozen times before I’m back at the tree line, but I’m glad of it, because my ankle is definitely at least sprained. I’m hobbling by the time I get to the beach, and I’ve broken out into a sweat by the time I get back to camp.

“You okay?” Remmy asks. Looks like I’m the last one back, besides Avo. I grimace at him, using my sign as a walking stick. I get the kit open and apply some antiseptic spray to the cuts on my legs and paws, then a quick bandage around my ankle. Finally, a couple pain pills down the gullet will help with swelling and let me rest. I should feel better in the morning if I stay off it for the night.

“Fish’s up!” Shouts Al.

“Fish?” I don’t remember seeing that in the cooler. Was it hiding under something?

Charlie was practically melting into Remmy’s lap as he massaged her back, her squint made the expression she was wearing nigh impossible to read in the flickering light of the fire. “Remmy caught it, with his own two hooves.”

Remmy looked embarrassed, but continued rubbed her back anyway. “It was with bait and tackle, but yeah.”

“Huh, no shit?” I took a skewer from the plate Al was passing around. It didn’t look anything like the fish we got in the city. This stuff was orange, and the skin was still on. I exchanged a look with Ozzy. It smelled fucking amazing, but I’d never dealt with fish as fresh as this. A slice of lemon got passed to me. Was this like a tequila shot? Do I bite the fish, then suck the lemon? Other way? I forced a smile as V brought around plates with salad.

“So, do we just eat it like this, or…?” Thanks for taking one for the team, Wolt. V shrugged, but Remmy replied.

“Peel the skin off, the meat should fall apart, so catch it with your plate.”

“When did you become an expert on this stuff, yarnball?” Avo had appeared behind Remmy, and his nervous jump had sent Charlie sprawling onto the ground, where she lay making a pitiful sound, having landed squarely on her snout.

“Avo, you know I don’t like being snuck up on!”

“That didn’t answer my question.” Avo rolled her long, lithe arms around the sheep, grabbing at his wool. Jesus, Avo, Charlie’s right there.

Remmy batted away her paws. She giggled like a five year old and stepped back.

“I had a very nice experience fishing today, and I learned a lot from a very helpful park ranger.”

“His name was Jeff,” Said Charlie, only now standing.

“No, it wasn’t,” Remmy began talking, then so did Marty, and Al, and the rest. Everyone had a long, interesting, and full day, except for V, who summed up her experience by chugging the rest of her vodka tonic, belching hugely, and passing out in her chair. Al carried her back to their tent as eyes turned to me.

“Went exploring,” I said.

“Find anything good?”

“Old lumber mill, up the west side of the lake, ‘bout thirty minutes. Also this.”

I presented my board for inspection. I got a half-assed chorus of oohs, and one very high pitched gasp from our local librarian.

“Recognize this, Marty?” I put the board down in front of the stoat who was staring at it in wonder. You’d think he had never seen such a big piece of wood before, but considering his social life, he probably hadn’t. Bam, I can sass too. Now if only I had said that out loud.

 “Hell yeah, I recognize it!” He grabbed a handful of sand and began rubbing it into the wood, scooping up more when he ran out.

“So, what is it?” I prompted. Marty was always eager to talk about something, but sometimes you had to get his mind back on track if he was doing something else, like reading.

“I think it’s a sign.” Said Annie.

“A sign we need more drinks?” Asked Wolt, the two sniggered, tapped their plastic cups together and went for refills.

“You’re actually both correct.” Stated Marty, standing back, admiring his work.

“Wait, really?” The twins immediately returned, they didn’t often get to be right about things that Marty knew about, so this was worth investigating.

“Really,” Marty had forced sand into a bunch of gaps I hadn’t even seen before, and the impression of a mountain formed, with the words ‘Face of the Mountain Bar,’ underneath it.

“Holy shit, we were right.” Wolt sounded amazed with himself.

“So you’re telling me there’s a bar here, and we didn’t know about it?” Annie asked, Marty shook his head. I was entranced by the sign. I know that mountain from somewhere.

“The Face of the Mountain went out of business over a hundred years ago, it’s a footnote in most history books, but at the time it marked a big push towards workers’ rights and unionization, especially in mining companies.” Marty did love his lectures.

“So we can’t go there.” Annie lost interest, but now Avo was staring at it.

“That mountain, it’s…” She started, turning her head back and forth, as if she was trying to look at it through each eye individually. Then it hit me like a ton of bricks where I had seen that mountain before.

“Old Yellow’s!” I shouted, “It’s the mountain that’s on the mirror in Old Yellow’s, the pub up in Otterdam!” No wonder I didn’t recognize it, that place is classy as fuck now. Me and Avo had gone once, when we were still young and attractive, for a couple drinks and hopefully some hightown tail. The snobs had come out pretty fast, and we booked it after a lion had expected me to buy him a cosmopolitan for the pleasure of his visage alone. Wait, wasn’t Old Yellow’s where the paper in the box was from? Then it all clicked.

“That’s Whiskey Mountain!” I actually jumped up from my seat this time, pointing in the vague direction of where I had found the plank. You could see the mountain in the morning light clearly now, and it did have a certain resemblance to the sign at our feet.

“Holy, shit, really?” Marty seemed just as excited as I was.

“Yeah, that’s where I found that.”

“We have to go!”

“Yeah, we do, how about-” I was going to say right now, but an unexpected yawn cut me off halfway through. “How about after we get some sleep?” I finished.

“That’s probably for the best.” Agreed Marty. The rest of the animals mumbled a chorus of okays, or I’ll see how I feel tomorrow’s and headed off to rest. I tucked myself into my tiny little tent, but now it felt cozy, and the open sides meant I could smell the trees, and the burning wood, and hear the splash of the fish in the lake. The last thing my mind comprehended before drifting off to sleep was one final fight between the twins.

“I don’t think either of them would like it if you used it as a surfboard.”

“Paddleboard, I don’t know how to surf.”

“Point remains.”

“In that case, can I use you as my flotation device?”

“Sorry, I’m rated for ages eighteen and up.”

“Is there a reason I haven’t smothered you in your sleep yet?”

“You think I’m funny.” Said Wolt.

“Okay, that’s one thing.” Replied Annie.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be much shorter. Much.


	4. Sunset

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> V loves camping. She loves the fresh air, she loves taking hikes in the forest, she loves warming her hooves by the fire, and most of all she loves doing it with Al beside her. At least, that’s how she imagined it was going to go.

“Al, be a dear would you and turn off the sun.”

V was sleeping. This is what she told herself because the alternative, accepting that she had just woken up with the worst hangover of her life, complete with a headache akin to a mouse jackhammering her temple, did not sound appealing in the least.

Her stomach felt like a bucket of tar balanced on the head of a pin. Right now? Fine. If anyone so much as even looked at it? Well, then you’re going to be scraping it off the floor for months. Her body felt like she had just lost a thirty hour cage match against The Rhino, including the 30 foot table drop. Her head wasn’t pounding, it was throbbing. The world against her closed eyes grew red and blindingly painful each heartbeat, only to sink back into blissful darkness for just a moment before the pain returned.

Then Al shifted beside her. The air mattress amplified his restless movements, and she had to slam a hoof against her mouth to keep the vomit from flooding forth. It took an agonizingly frustrating panic filled five seconds of flailing at the blanket before she had freed herself, and rushed outside.

The sun and heat and humidity hit her like a damp, hot, blanket. The air practically squelched as she stumbled away from the tent. She got an entire six steps into the forest before the second wave of nausea won out, and she threw up on the world’s least lucky shrub.

She felt like death over easy, and looking at the brilliant swirl of colors that had come out of her just made her wretch out more spittle. Why was she so hung over? Had she really drank that much? Her memories were, well nonexistent, but she had just woken up, so them being fuzzy was normal. She hoped.

_Okay,_ she thought, _you can puzzle this out._ She had started drinking when they crossed the bridge out of Zootopia, but that had just been a couple beers, after that… V could remember stopping for lunch at around midnight, of course, that was after drink three, or was it four? She had another beer with lunch, so that put her at maybe five, then Annie had broken out the vodka, at which point her memory shrugged its shoulders and looked for someplace flat to lie down.

It had been stifling hot inside the tent, but the sun was an unyielding laser of death, and its unblinking eye was casting its terrible gaze directly into V’s smoking retinas. V stumbled back to the tent, tripped on nothing, and resigned herself to crawling on hoofs and knees into the shade of the forest, where she propped herself up against a tree.

She felt like she was walking through the world’s best lit sauna. She was sweating, shivering, and her mouth felt like she’d been eating sand all night. The feeling of parched flesh coated in slick vomit was quite possibly the worst taste and texture combination she’d ever had the misfortune of encountering.

_Deep breaths,_ she thought, _think this through. Your head hurts, your arms won’t stop shaking, your mouth tastes like shit, and you almost just threw up on your fiancé. But you didn’t, so one out of ten for the day. Ibuprofen, yes, drugs, they’re in the tent, and water… Water where?_

V steeled herself for the blinding light, and forced her eyes open again. She slammed them shut immediately, then inched them open just a slit, but it was enough to observe her surroundings: thick pine trees and green ferns grew over a bed of brown pinecones and needles, the detritus broken here and there by a twisting maze of roots. She was lying near her tent, and the sloshing sound behind her, that only served to remind her of how much she needed to pee, was probably a lake or a river.

_Okay, camping by a pond, so definitely water here._

Last night was slowly rising from her subconscious to fill in all the details of why she deserved such a terrible fate. She could now remember Annie pushing Marty into the water and he looked so funny she had fallen off the log from laughing at the sight of the tiny soaked animal screaming his lungs out at her. Next, Charlie had done something with a coin and Avo’s ear that almost killed Wolt when he tried to laugh with half a burger in his mouth. Then there was the moment when Remmy had- had done what?

She had gone to bed early, early for the pack at least. For her it was so late in the night she was almost ready to wake up again. With her and Al’s schedules, she hadn’t even made an attempt to go nocturnal, and now she could say for certain that if she ever did, it would take its pound of flesh many times before being done with her.

She checked her watch, three in the afternoon. That meant she had slept for nine hours, and she still felt like she had been hit by the Savanna Central loop.

She could hear Al’s snores through the tent wall. They were soft and quiet now, almost drowned out by the splashing in the distance. It was a small blessing at least, as his normal snores were comparable to a chainsaw falling down the stairs. Had he drank as much as her? Probably more, but the big wolf was easily twice her mass, so he could take it.

_He can help,_ she thought, _he had to help. God I need another drink._

On unsure legs V forced herself up and around the tent. She grabbed at each tree, sapling, and pole as she went, anything to keep her at least a little vertical. When she rounded the corner, the lake came into view. It would have been beautiful if the glare hadn’t killed her instantly. _I’m blind. I’m blind forever now. This is the best vacation I’ve ever been on,_ she thought with a sarcastic grimace. She rubbed her hooves into her eyes, replacing the purple afterimage with a swirl of colors that only made her want to hurl again.

_Breath, throw up again, do whatever it takes, just get to Al._ After what felt like twenty minutes of psyching herself up to take a second look, she inched her hooves away from her eyes, and squeezed them open one by one. The camp before her was strewn with trash from last night, but one particular refuse pile caught her eye, very much looking like an oasis to a mammal lost in the desert.

Next to a large white tent with blackout curtains and a built in box fan was a pile of milk jugs filled with water. She stumbled over to it, and only cursed the names of all the gods she knew once. She grabbed a jug and drained half of it. It tasted disgusting, but that was the taste of her own mouth. She took a hesitant step back towards her tent and her stomach immediately rebelled. She got an entire eight steps into the forest this time before her body rejected the water it very much needed.

Her next sips were more sedate, making sure to pant heavily between each one. She had to fight off the humidity with each breath, and give enough time for her stomach to calm. A swarm of gnats had gathered around her, and she could barely raise a hoof to swipe at them. V grabbed another jug for Al, then a second for her, just in case. She felt like she could drink the entire lake, but doubted if she could get a drop more past her lips without gagging.

The water made her mouth feel clean again, although nothing could wash away the memory of the Picasso piece she had made on that shrub.

She snuck back into bed beside Al, who rolled over and hooked her in close in his sleep, the eternal big spoon in the relationship. She fumbled for her pack, and pulled out her pain pills. She took two and started looking for a black piece of cloth. She didn’t have a sleeping mask, so an unidentified black scrap was pressganged into being a replacement. She draped it over her eyes, hoping that it would provide literally any level of relief as she tried to go back to sleep.

 

_Don’t look away. You got to be brave, now._

_You got to be strong, Al._

Al woke, his breath ragged and forced as he struggled his way back into consciousness. The image of his childhood home quickly faded as the sights of today filled in the void of memory. He was in his tent, V was beside him, and that old shit-hole apartment in Baobab Street was thousands of miles away.

_Same fucking dream,_ Al thought as he pinched the bridge of his nose, _different fucking day._

He stretched out in the tent as much as he could, which didn’t even allow him to stand up properly. He had bought the biggest one he could afford, and that was going in half with V. He hunched back down and shuffled around the air mattress, taking each step with care to not disturb his still dozing fiancé. For some inexplicable reason she had a pair of his boxers on her head. She was also on top of the covers, and wearing only a pair of panties, her limbs spread wide. She rolled over, the sheet sticking to her exposed fur.

Al chuckled at the sight and peeled the sheet off of her. She was sweating like a fox in the witness box, but other than that seemed fine. Al let his gaze take her in, a vision of grace and beauty only slightly marred by a mysterious crusting around her lips and the entire “recently hit by a truck” look. His gaze finally slipped off her to find a couple jugs of water, one partially drained already. Al hooked a claw around a full one and stepped out into the day.

It was bright, but nothing he wasn’t used to. His eyes had adjusted by the time he had gotten his back popped, which he swore was taking a little longer every day. Marty was already awake, a book spread on his knees. He was just sort of staring into the distance though, his eyes unmoving and his mouth open. He had opened a jar of homemade trail mix, and was clutching a raisin. Al watched it very slowly slip from his grasp to fall into the sand beside him.

“How’d you sleep?” Al asked. Marty only then seemed to notice him, turning slowly, his eyes glazed. When he was finally looking at the alpha, the stoat seemed to jerk awake, blinking and rubbing his fists into his face.

“Terribly,” said Marty, “I felt like I was sleeping on a broken beer bottle.” He shimmied out from under his book, which was as large as he was, and paced a small circle while rolling his shoulders and rubbing feeling back into his biceps. “You?”

Al popped the cooler and pulled out a packaged of chilled sausages. He gave it a quick shake to flick the water off before he placed them on the table and opened the plastic with a claw. “Actually, pretty good. Early night and not too much drinking, tents mugged up, but we could probably crack the flap next time.”

Marty nodded at that. “At least it’s cooler up here.”

Al chuckled and pulled out the skillet. Someone had placed a fresh log on the fire a few hours ago, and with a couple more he soon had it hot and large enough to properly cook the bugwursts. The grease from the sausages crackled and popped pleasingly as he turned back to the stoat, who had already buried his head back in his book, “Anyone else up yet?”

Marty shook his head, “I haven’t seen anyone ‘sides you.” A large Bluebottle floated off the lake and started investigating his ear. He swatted at it, knocking it into the fire, “I’ve been up half a minute and they’re already trying to eat me alive.”

“Go wake up Charlie then,” his own ears were flicking constantly, throwing off the insects that had found him as soon as he had exited his tent. Marty grunted and returned to his book.

Al took a sip of water and appraised his new kingdom by the sea. Five tents, no, six, if you counted the blue tarp draped over a branch. So, five and a half tents made up the Pack’s slice of civilization. They ranged from Marty’s tiny thing that was only slightly larger than a football, to Remmy and Charlie’s air-conditioned multi-room construction. In sheer size, though, Wolt and Annie took the cake with a repurposed gazebo they had covered in blankets.

Al chuckled to himself at the assembled sight, they made it work, they always did. The sausages spat and popped in the skillet, and Al pulled them off. “Grub’s ready, if you’re hungry.”

Marty mumbled back non-committally, and flipped a page on his book. Al smiled at the answer, that’s Marty for yah. Next on the fire was a thick slice of bread with brown sugar. Thirty seconds on one side, thirty seconds on the other, then two of the cooked sausages on top made a slimy, fattening, but oh so sweet open-face sandwich that practically squirted grease when you bit into it. It was a breakfast built for a man who was planning on doing nothing all day, and didn’t care how dirty his shirt got while he was doing it.

“Hey good looking,” Ozzy said as he wandered up looking no worse of wear for the night, “What’cha got cooking?”

“It’s a grease pit,” Al threw another slice of bread into the pan and started fixing the hyena breakfast. “You want coffee?”

“No, thanks, boss,” Ozzy grabbed an apple from the cooler, pulled the stem out the top, and bit down hard. It snapped in half with a sharp crunch, and sprayed juice and seeds in a fine mist that bathed the world in a fruity scent. He practically ground the fruit to bits in his mouth, not stopping for core or seeds.

“You are truly a marvel of evolution,” started Marty from below him, “but could you next time spill your spittle and seed on the ground somewhere else?”

The hyena giggled at the remark, stretched, and yawned. His cavernous mouth was still full of bits of fruit. He walked back to Remmy’s pleasure palace, and extracted a jug of OJ from the pile of water. Then he approached the fire, where he popped a couple pills into his mouth and forced them down with a swig. He pulled a face, then stuck out his tongue at the alpha, clean and pink. Al nodded and patted his shoulder, sending him off with one of his special ‘sandwiches.’

The hyena leapt over Marty, garnering only a squeak of anger when his shadow interrupted the light, then leaned against the other side of the log to watch the water as he ate. Each wave was tipped with a shimmering reflection, like an endless line of crystals glittering in the sun.

Al put on a pot of coffee anyway. He’d want some eventually, and the twins would be zombies all day without it. He joined the hyena to watch the show. “Not bad,” he mumbled.

Ozzy smiled. He was picking at the log behind him, pulling off small chunks of bark to drop at his toes. He tapped at the latest piece with a claw, then threw it away with a dismissive chuckle. Al raised his eyebrow at the hyena’s antics, wordlessly asking for an explanation. The hyena shrugged, “Sure, it’s a hell of a widescreen, but this is the only channel that it gets.”

Al laughed through his nose, shaking his head and closing his eyes at the stupid joke.

“Al…” The call from V was quiet, but insistent. Al checked the coffee, little weak, but he poured her a cup anyway. She was spread out on the air mattress, the covers kicked to a corner. She twitched her impromptu sun mask to the side as he entered, a single blood-shot eye glaring at him from the darkness.

“Help me,” she croaked.

“Coffee,” he said, and pulled her into a sitting position, forcing the cup into her hoof. She took a swallow, pulled a face, and then took another one, before handing it back. “You look beautiful.”

She forced a sarcastic smile, “And you forgot the sugar, but thank you.” He handed the coffee back and she drained the rest without a word, pausing only twice to gag at the taste. He grabbed the cup before she dropped it, her form falling back lifeless onto the mattress. There she returned his boxers to her face, preventing him from further reading her expression. He leaned over and kissed her collarbone, and she pushed his snout away, giggling at his affections, “Get out of here, you big lug.”

He chuckled, and left her to nurse her hangover. Charlie and Remmy were up now. The fox was wearing Remmy’s clothes from last night, and was covering the ram with bug spray as he spun slowly around, his arms stuck out at straight angles. With his ample wool he looked like a very fat T.

_Wooly T_ , Al mentally corrected. Charlie had either already done herself, or had slept in the lake because she was practically sopping. There was a small circle on the ground by Marty that looked wet too, no doubt where he had been sprayed. In the distance, Ozzy was splashing in the shallows, throwing stones and laughing like a pup.

Al cooked the couple breakfast, Remmy practically wolfing down his food before rushing back to his tent. There he jammed on an absurd hat with corks swinging from it, and grabbed a fishing pole. He lastly hooked his tackle box through an arm before tottering off east along the shore. Charlie followed him at a more sedate pace, taking a small box cooler with her. Lunch, or drinks, no doubt.

Al finished with six more sausages, two respective for Betty and Avo, who were still AWOL, and one for each of the twins, whose tent had been silent since Al had risen. The camp was mostly quiet now, with only the occasional yip from Ozzy, who was building a fortress made of stones near the waterline.

Al took a step away from the fire, the heat finally getting to him after all that cooking, and breathed deep. A chill breeze was blowing off the lake, and with it an almost crisp smell, something he usually only associated with the coming of autumn.

He was a tundra wolf. He should be used to the cold, but living in downtown Zootopia meant that it only got cold in the winter, and even then, it was a rare day when it dipped below freezing. It was nowhere near that now, but what chill there was proved a welcome relief. It felt good, unfamiliar, but good, to have a roaring fire at his back, and a cold wind at his front. It was pleasant, and it spoke to him in a manner he couldn’t really articulate, like it was innately correct.

V tapped him on the shoulder. She had dressed and made an attempt at putting on some makeup. He pulled her in close and planted a quick kiss on her cheek before she moved to sit down beside him.

“Enjoying the weather?” she asked.

“Mmhmm,” he replied, looping an arm around her.

“Everyone get some breakfast?” she was definitely feeling better, since she had started worrying about everyone else.

“Think so, Avo and Betty left before we woke up,” he replied. Ozzy had grown bored of his rock castle, and was strumming his guitar aimlessly, splashing his toes in the water to the stuttering, rambling rhythm only he could follow.

“They can take care of themselves. Did Ozzy-”

“He took ‘em in front of me.”

She moved closer to him, using his heat to counteract the breeze off the lake. “Good, good.” She wrung her hooves, not entirely comfortable in what she had to say next, “Has Avo seemed a little off to you lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh, just, talking back to everyone, and sniping at the pack.”

He chuckled, “That sounds like Avo to me all right.”

She pursed her lips together into a grimace, “Yes, but, more so than usual.”

“Maybe it’s just nerves,” Al pinched her leg, causing her to jump and squeal, before she smacked him playfully in retribution. “Times haven’t been easy, and she probably got the worst of it. If somethings eating at her, I’d be the first to know.” He added before escaping the loving embrace to fetch a can of bug spray.

“Stand,” he told V. She did, and he started spraying her down.

“So, I was thinking that later tonight-”

“Mouth closed,” a breath of the aerosol hit V’s tongue as she tried to talk, and she shut her mouth until he was done. When he was, she very elegantly horked up a loogie, and spat four times into the fire, each time washing her mouth out with water after.

“As I was saying-” began V again.

“My turn,” said Al as he handed her the can, smiling wolfishly at her annoyance. She started spraying him down, taking extra care to ensure that his face and ears were heavily doused with the odorous stuff.

“Now-“

“Evening, all!” Wolt and Annie shouted as they strutted into camp. They were wearing matching shades and basketball uniforms. On the front, they both read ‘Go Hard.’ On the back, they had printed ‘On the Court,’ followed by the number 69, and bookmarked with ‘In Bed.’ “Where can a couple hungry preds get a good breakfast around here?”

“Breakfast? Bit late for-” Al started, then he caught the look from V. He pointed to the plate of cold sausages and shut up. Her glare was scathing, her mouth brought into a tight line. He shrugged and smiled in what could be very stereotypically described as sheepish. Her expression broke immediately.

“Just can’t stay angry at you, can I?” he stuck his tongue out like a pup and let her continue. “So, as I was trying to say, I think that before lunch we could go on a little hike. There’s a trail down by the river that I read about.”

He pulled her in close, planting a kiss on her lips before she could react. He then ruffled the fur along her back with a quick rub. “As long as you’re there, I’d walk into hell.”

 

He’d never admit it, but V knew that despite his early misgivings, Al had taken to camping like a pup at play. Even now, half way through their hike down a muddy embankment filled with sharp rocks, hidden roots, and moss that squelched audibly and stuck between your toes, he was still smiling as wide as he could. He was stopping every few feet to take a picture, sniff at a flower, pick a mushroom, or flip over an interesting looking rock he found.

She could only think of one other time when he had looked happier.

They had packed a light spread of crackers and wine cheese. They would be back before lunch time, or perhaps just at lunch time. Either way, a picnic in the woods would be woefully incomplete without at least some snacks.

But the culinary accoutrement didn’t worry V right now. Instead, she just couldn’t stop looking at the tree trunks, and couldn’t help but notice the line of shadow grow higher on them as the light faded. She wondered if they were going to have to come back up this embankment in the dark.

“There,” Al pointed to their left. About fifty feet ahead, partially obscured by the undergrowth, was a wooden sign pointing out the branching path. They took it, Al happily squelching through the underbrush, V trying to avoid the mud where she could.

As if in defiance to the quickly approaching dark, the forest was tinged a deep golden orange that made the greens of the foliage pop, like she was walking through a Thomas Cole painting. The river gurgled constantly beside them, its hypnotic rhythm interrupted only briefly now and then by a fish jumping or some small log bumping along the surface. The wind far above was rustling the foliage of the trees, creating a low yet constant conversational sound that was almost like being whispered at from across the room. Altogether the forest had just as much noise as the city, but it was a serene and soothing noise, rather than something that kept you always on edge.

V couldn’t stand it. When you heard a car, you looked both ways before crossing. When you heard the train coming, you step back from the track. When you heard an angry drunk vomiting up the street, you go to the other side. What do you do when you hear a fish splash? Do you dart your eyes up whenever the trees creak, ready to dodge a falling limb? What if she encountered a dangerous creature, or fell off a cliff, or what if someone got lost, or-

“This looks like a good spot,” Al’s voice broke into V’s worrying. He was pointing out a small glade, now cast in dappled shadows. The grass was long and heavy with seed. It whisked at the pair’s ankles as they moved, constantly tickling as they laid out the blanket and spread.

“So, now that we are alone,” began Al, once again pulling her close. “How about we work up some appetite?”

“Oooh, so this is why you took me camping.”

“This was your idea,” he whispered into her neck, placing whispering kisses as he descended. His paw worked its way down her stomach to slip inside her shorts. She gasped as he began exploring her, and the two lost themselves in the intimacy only two lovers could know.

 

The moment seemed to end as quickly as it began, and with little fanfare the two returned to their conversation. First they broke out the snacks, and after a pawful of failed attempts to feed each other, both Al and V silently agreed to just feed themselves.

“So,” began V, “there I was, just about to go check on Henrietta when I get the call.” Al nodded, his face full of food. “Mind you, it’s about seven in the morning and I’m already stepping out of the cab. I’m trying to listen to the driver, but I’m also on my phone trying to make sense of Conor’s latest breakdown, and the guy just drives off without me paying him!” Al helped himself to another cracker, “So now I’m stuck in the middle of the rainforest district, miles from a bus stop, and I have a hyperventilating boar on the end of the line. So, what do I do?”

“What do you do?” Al prompted, snatching the cheese container from by her thigh.

“I tell Conor to take his meds, flag down the next passing semi, and am in front of Henrietta’s apartment five minutes early, as per usual!” she finished with no small amount of smug.

“Ha!” he shouted, only increasing her pleasure with the whole situation. She snapped her arm out, stealing the cracker right out of Al’s mouth, and devoured it with a somehow even smugger visage.

He gave her another short laugh and started to make another one, this time shielding it with both paws on the way to his mouth.

“Oh, Al, earlier,” she said, “about Avo.”

“Yeah?”

V huffed, her tongue working at a tooth to dislodge a piece of cracker while she mulled her words. “I don’t know, but, I’m getting a bad feeling about how much she’s been working lately.”

Al shrugged, “Dora’s back, she wants to spend as much time with her as possible, might as well get paid for it.”

“Al, I love you,” she gave him a peck on the nose before continuing, “but I am a trained professional, my opinion isn’t just idle musing.”

“And I’ve known Avo for almost a decade,” he countered, “but you’re right, I’ll hear you out.”

“When was the last time she hung out with Marty?”

Al scratched his neck while he pondered the question, “Can’t rightly say, but I don’t really have the time to keep tabs on everyone.”

“What about Betty, then?”

“Don’t know that either.”

She furrowed her brow at him, “I mean, would Betty know if she’s done anything that wasn’t work or exercise lately?”

“Oh, definitely,” he said, “if anyone knows where the pack is at all times, even without wanting to, it would be Betty.”

“Know how she’s been doing financially?”

Al shrugged again, “Fine as far as I know, she needed help back when she was temping when the store closed, but we covered her.”

“And now?”

“And now she’s paying it back, doesn’t have to, but that’s just the kind of mammal she is. In fact, just two days ago she- agh,”

While reaching for another cracker, he suddenly grunted as his back tightened, forcing him to roll his shoulder while grimacing at the stab of pain.

“Back’s fine,” he said, preempting the question.

“Then it shouldn’t bother you so much, here, roll over.” V instructed. He complied, letting his muzzle sink into the tufts of grass as V’s hooves sunk into his taught muscles. “Al, you’re like a rock back here, have you been doing your stretches?”

“I don’t have time for them in the morning,” the massage was a mixture of pain and pleasure. Her hard hooves stabbed into him like railroad spikes whenever she worked at the deeper muscles, but the easing of tension after they left was worth it.

“If you want to be able to lift anything past the age of fifty, you’ll make the time for it.”

“Mmmph,” he grumbled.

She kept working at his back, almost strong arming the knots out. She didn’t really know what she was doing, and it showed with each wince whenever she pinched a nerve. She made up for it with plenty of gusto, though, which now only sometimes elicited a roar of pain from him. She hadn’t gotten better at giving massages, but he had gotten better at quieting himself before they escaped.

She finished, giving him a slap on the ass as their universal sign of affection. “At least this is supposed to be tight.”

“Heh, glad you still like that, after all these years.”

“What are you talking about?”

He propped himself up on his elbows, giving her a mischievous look. “What, don’t you remember first grade?”

“Why, what about first gra-” she stopped as realization dawned. A blush overcame her face, which didn’t stop her from shouting and beating on his back with playful blows. “I can’t believe you remember that!”

“Ow, ow,” he said as she hit tender spots, “of course I remember the first time I got goosed, that’s something that sticks with you.”

She stopped hitting him long enough to give him a kiss. “I still think you should get a job doing something less stressful.”

He let her change the topic of conversation, he had had his fun. “I’ll sell blenders out of a mall when I’m dead.”

“Just as long as you leave me everything.” She played with his ears while speaking.

“But then how will the kids go to college?”

When she didn’t immediately reply he looked back at her. She was looking down, almost sadly. “What, what is it?” He rolled upright and cupped her face in his paws, gently lifting her so she could look at him.

“Al, do you want children?”

The question caught him off guard, and he let his paws drops.

“You can say no, don’t just say what you think I want to hear.”

“Oh, V,” he finally joined her in looking down “I’m just thinking.” V waited for him to continue. He often spoke his mind as soon as he made it up, and him taking the time, well, that was something worth waiting for.

_Don’t look away. You got to be brave, now._

Those damn words had always stuck with him. He could barely remember the incident that had inspired the talk, but his father’s reaction had been burned into his memory like a brand. A huge wolf, so overtaken with white fury that he was a sea of calm. His feelings only betrayed by one giant paw crushing a steel beer can like it was tin foil.

_You got to be strong, Al._

_Strong as you, or stronger?_ He thought.

“Do you,” he finally began, gaze locked on his own paws, “do you think I’d make a good father?”

“Of course!” V burst out, “You’d make the best father any pup could ever have!”

He looked at her, blinking repeatedly, a smile forcing its way onto his lips. “V, you,” he stopped, choking over his words, “you’d make the best damn mother any fawn could wish for.”

She leaned over, pulling him into a hug. He laid his big head on her back, letting the emotions wash away. He sniffed, then whispered, “Yeah, I think I’d want a kid. Maybe a girl, but I’d be okay with a little boy.”

“Of course, of course,” she whispered, cradling him and gently rotating her hoof on his back, coaxing out the words.

He took a big breath in, then let it out, forcing the last of his silent worries away. He unwrapped himself from V, and started cleaning up. “We better get back to camp, the children we already do have are probably getting hungry for lunch, and I don’t think they can feed themselves.”

V laughed at the remark, and started folding the blanket. When she finished she stood up and poked Al in the side.

“What?” he said, mouth full of crackers.

“Love you,” she replied, and dashed back up the path.

 

By the time the pair arrived back at camp, the sun had finally dipped below the horizon, and above them stretched a ribbon of stars. They’d seen a similar sight on their date to the planetarium, but the real thing had a certain unique flair. Also there wasn’t an eighty year old docent forgetting half his speech about the constellations.

The fire was still going bright, but the camp was only half occupied by animals.

Marty was by the fire, engrossed in the same book he had been nose-deep in during breakfast, Wolt and Annie were in sight farther along the beach, their bobbing lights and distant whooping denoting some sort of game, although the darkness had settled in too deeply to discern details.

“Looks like everyone else’s out exploring,” V remarked

Al checked his watch in the firelight, his phone having died over night. “It’s just past midnight, they’ll probably be showing up pretty soon.”

V made a small noise in acknowledgement and started cleaning the food preparation area. The coolers had accumulated a layer of dust that had to go, the long table needed a table cloth, and someone had left a half finished bottle of vodka in the sand, all on its own, with no sprite, tonic water, or lemon slices to keep it company. How utterly deplorable of them.

Al just chuckled when he saw her take a swig and pull a face. “Getting a head start tonight?”

“Just making sure it was still good to drink,” she replied, then nestled the bottle into the cooler. “It is, by the way.”

“Good, don’t want anyone getting sick.”

The two set to work preparing a smorgasbord for the hungry animals that would no doubt soon creep in from the shadows. Processed and formed bug meats made up most of the lunch options, with accompanying acts of vegetables, carved fruit, and a rich sauce the ibex from the farmers market who had sold them most of the food had snuck into the cooler with little more than a wink and a nod. The container read “for sandwiches,” and it tasted like salt, fried bits, gravy, and a rich spice that snuck up on the tongue, appearing first in the throat as a slow creeping burn.

Al and V had an experimental taste, exchanged a look, and placed it at the back of the table, where only the most suicidaly curious of animals could get to it.

“Pretty as a picture,” said V, stepping back to admire the table, now laden with all the accoutrements that any predator could hope for in a spread.

“And the table looks good too,” he snuck a quick peck on the cheek “And here’s yours.” Al pulled out one of V’s pre-prepared salads and passed it over.

“Thank you,” she replied. Despite Al’s excellent cooking, V just didn’t like the taste of bug, no matter how often Remmy described it as: ‘The best thing ever, bar nothing. That includes you, Charlie. Yes I’m being serious.’ She smiled at the memory. Rams could be very bullheaded when they weren’t thinking, and Remmy hardly thought at all when food was available.

V pulled the wrapper off her salad and blanched at the wilted produce she found. “Honey, did you pack this under the ice?”

“No, but I found it there. Everything must have shifted during the drive.”

_If one salad is ruined, the rest were probably in a similar state_ , thought V. _Still, I must eat. Doesn’t mean that I must eat sober._

V fixed herself a vodka tonic with a lemon twist, and was just putting down the bottles when Al crept up on her.

“Mind sharing?” He asked.

“Of course, dear, twist?”

“Please.”

The drink was cold, and the alcohol alleviated the last of her headache. Sure she was still tired as all hell, but after a couple of sips at her, admittedly quite strong, cocktail she could stomach the wilted salad. It made her want to puke again, but in a blessedly different manner that meant that she didn’t have to actually hurl, and instead just regret all her life choices that had led her to this day.

“I’m on vacation,” she declared to no one in particular as she poured herself another glass. Yeah, she WAS on vacation, she deserved a second drink, and a third one when she’d finished that one… And maybe a fourth one too, sometime in the future. After all, she’d been working very hard recently, and deserved the break. That’s right, she deserved this. She’d deserved the fifth one too, although she wouldn’t have to jump through nearly as many hoops to justify drink six.

“Betty, you’re back!” V called out to the wolf, who had just pushed her way through the undergrowth to appear almost in the middle of camp. The Beta waved at the assembled, her upstretched paw tracking the doe’s swaying form.

“Just here for lunch, got a lot of walking to do if I want to hit my miles.” Betty stated, her voice sounded a little off to Al. It lacked the hard edge of anger and paranoia that usually painted anything she said. Instead, it was replaced with a hint of laughter, although her tone and face didn’t perfectly match up. That being said, she hadn’t started a coup and wasn’t currently bleeding out, so it was a problem that could wait until he at least finished lunch.

Anneke and Wolter had wandered up too, their forms coming into the light with a ball flying between them. Annie threw a beaner at Wolter, who didn’t get his paws up in time to stop it from smacking him ‘round the ears.

She winced, “Sorry, bro, thought you were paying attention.”

Wolt returned the wince as he rubbed at his chuffed head, trying to straighten out the fur that had been mashed by the ball’s impact. V listened in on Betty and Annie’s conversation as Al waved Wolt over.

“What can I do for you, boss?” the aardwolf asked when they had left the immediate light of the fire.

“Don’t call me that.” Al said, “reminds me too much of work.” Wolt shrugged and waited for the real reply. “Have you noticed anything off about Avo lately?”

“What, Marty been slacking?” Wolt’s grin was shut down by Al’s glare. “She still won’t let me use her employee discount at Pandora’s, so no, nothing out of the ordinary.”

“Mmm, fine, go eat.”

“Sir, yes sir!” Al sent the cheeky aardwolf off with a clack of his jaws.

_He’s right, you should be asking Marty,_ thought Al.

It was the Pack’s worst kept secret. Al was the alpha, Betty was the beta, Remmy was the omega, and Marty was a snitch. If you needed Al to know about something, you took advantage of his open door policy, unless the door was closed at the time, in which case you could fuck off. If you really needed to tell Al something, you recruited V, and hid behind her when talking to him. If you really, REALLY, needed to tell Al something, you pointedly did not talk about it in front of Marty.

Marty was Al’s best friend, outside of V, but he was an incurable gossip who was willing to believe nearly anything told to him if the speaker was charismatic, or crazy, enough. Of course, this meant that if anyone had kept their ear low enough to the ground to hear what was up with Avo, it would be him.

It was a long shot, but it had V worried, and not in the normal way V worried about everyone and everything.

“Marty,” Al called, the animal didn’t respond. “Marty!” Al called again. This time he shot up, looking around wildly. Al motioned him over, shot glass already prepped for the tiny stoat..

“I was just getting to the good part,” Marty mumbled as he scrambled up the log to come face to face with Al’s belly button. “Kustodiev had just set up this brilliant parallel between the Major’s advisors and the-”

“Drink,” Al commanded, shoving the tiny plastic cup into Marty’s paws. The stoat took a sip, and pulled a face. “What? Mixed wrong?”

“This is just vodka,” Marty stated, swirling the clear liquid around, “you didn’t even try to mix it.”

“It’s called a shot,” Al grinned, “And I squeezed some lemon in.”

“Are you trying to kill me, or just get me drunk enough to sleep with you?”

Al chuckled, then put on a more serious face, “Marty, have you heard anything about Avo lately?”

“Hmmm, nope.” He took another sip, and the words spilled out as they always did. “I mean, Remmy and Charlie were talking about how she’s gotten really heavily into those prank videos. You can hear her laughing at like 2 in the afternoon, still awake. She’s been going through a lot more lollipops than normal, even more than when her boss went sav- when Pandora was sick. Betty’s been around a couple of times with her cure-all soup, apparently she’s on this new fasting diet that has her skipping meals and she keeps skipping too many.”

The stoat shrugged, entirely sure of his non-knowledge of the situation. “Also she bought basically everything Remmy brought, although it was under the table through Charlie.”

“So you really haven’t heard anything then?”

“Nope.” The stoat either had an amazing poker face, or did not even begin to notice Al’s sarcasm. Al could only shake his head and dismiss the entire thing.

“Just go back to your book.” Marty didn’t have to be told twice.

_So, high stress, and a low calorie diet, not a good combination._ Al mulled over the conversation, looking for any tell that she was in more dire straits than just that. _Did she owe Charlie for something? Pack helps pack, maybe Charlie asked her._

“Well, as long as you had fun,” V’s voice broke into his mind, she was talking to Betty, “we have lunch meats and bread for sandwiches, feel free to help yourself.”

She squeaked in surprise as Al grabbed her from behind, pulling her into an embrace. “You no-good bully!” She playfully batted at his chest, struggling to free herself, although not enough to actually get free. In the distance, Betty pulled a face, and the couple ignored her.

“So affectionate today,” V whispered as Al frog-marched her towards the lake, “wait, where are we going?”

“You have your swimsuit on underneath that, right?”

V’s mouth formed a perfect O as her eyebrows shot up, “Honey, if you even think about-”

“Too late!” Al shouted as he waded into the water, V screamed and beat against his chest, until the frigid lake hit her butt and all the fight drained from her. Her body tightened like a spring as the cold seeped in, before eventually relaxing in his arms.

“I thought you were going to throw me in! How could you!”

“He he, I didn’t, though,” he leaned down to give her a quick peck on the forehead before letting her slide out of his arms to stand, shivering, in the cold waters. “Cold, ain’t it?”

V replied by sending a great wave of water over him. Al sputtered as he shook from the chill creeping into his fur.

“Oh, now you’re gonna get it!”

 

The witching hour was lost in playful splashing through the shallows, and the laughter of couple given youth again through each other. After that came drying off next to the campfire with stolen kisses and exploring touches, both hidden from the world by large towels that could have been blankets.

Al had never known he could be this relaxed, or this content.

At least he would be if Wolter hadn’t kept asking him what species he would be if he hadn’t been born a tundra wolf. Apparently, ‘A different kind of wolf,’ was not the answer he was looking for.

Of course, through the exchange, Al had finished a beer, and V was matching him drink for drink with cocktails. Anneke’s eyebrows raised once, but a look from Al put them right back where they belonged, and it didn’t take them too much longer to get the hint to fuck off.

The lake was too cold to spend too much time in after dark, so V and Al settled onto the log over-looking it. Ozzy had finally stopped listening to the music in his head and was playing an old strumming tune with words even Al knew.

“Another drink?” he already knew the answer to his question but he might as well ask it anyway.

“Of course, hon!” V happily replied, before chugging the latter half of her current vodka tonic. Al used the fetching as an excuse to stand up and pop his back again. They hadn’t invested in camp chairs, and he was regretting it already.

As he cut up a new lemon his ears pricked and he looked up, straight into the darkness. He was the Alpha, so a little darkness couldn’t scare him, and it really wasn’t that dark, the fire illuminated trees for several hundred meters, but the shadows…

The shadows jumped and flickered and danced, and filled the forest with false movement. Al shook his head and grabbed another beer. It was just the alcohol playing tricks with him. They were a couple hours out of the nearest bumpkin town, sure, but that didn’t mean the forest had anything scarier in it than Remmy. Okay, that was a bad example. The sheep had fallen asleep with his eyes open last night and those strange pupils didn’t reflect any light at all, like they were portals straight to a stygian abyss.

Okay, there wasn’t anything scarier than Wolter out there, besides Remmy, so just as long as the sheep didn’t go cannibalistic on them, they would be fine. Most of the pack was out there, though, and Al couldn’t help but wonder where they had ended up. In fact, only Betty had checked in, and she had made herself scarce right after lunch.

Al could feel his brow furrowing all on its own, his lips curling apart and a growl growing deep in his throat. He choked them all back and turned away from the woods. He was the scariest motherfucker here, he knew that, and he would be damned if-

“Evening Sir, Ma’am, could I trouble you for your fire license?”

Ozzy watched the beer formerly in Al’s paw fly up and over the camp, soar over the beach, and land with a distant splash in the shallows out of sight. There, beside the fire, like a mountain come to visit, was the single largest grizzly bear Al, Ozzy, or quite possibly, the world in general, had ever seen. Al had trouble focusing on the animal, turning his head this way and that to try and fit all his bulk into his brain at a single time. V waved from her log.

“Evening, Ranger, I have everything in my tent, let me just- oops!” She caught herself before falling, but her drink went onto the ground. “Sorry, let me just, ha ha, Al? Al, come here would you?”

Al retreated from the forest ranger. He only now spotted the hat posed precariously on top of the huge head, and the slight change from the dark brown of fur to the dark green of uniform along his chest and legs. He scooped up V, and helped her walk the half dozen feet to the tent, where she fell through the opening and scrambled into her bag.

“I know I put it with the others, it’s gotta be here somewhere. Ah, it’s so dark in here, Al!” He turned to fetch a light, but had to about face immediately when she called: “Wait, got it!” Al had to pull V into a standing position by one arm, in it she clutched a small pink slip that she proudly thrust towards the ranger.

He took it with claws the length and width of Al’s muzzle and turned to the fire to read it. He nodded once and handed it back. “Thank you very much, ma’am, everything seems to be in order. You enjoying your night?”

“Yes!” V shouted. Al caught her as she swung on him, marching her back to the log. He took a look at it before setting her down in front of it, on the helpful, if incorrect, idea that she couldn’t fall off the ground.

“You’ve got yourself a nice set up here,” the grizzly’s voice sounded like boulders grinding deep troughs in solid rock. “But you’re short a few heads, mind if I ask where they are?”

“Around,” Al didn’t feel like explaining further.

The ranger nodded. “Just keep an eye on everyone, this is usually a pretty safe forest, but I don’t like the look of those clouds coming up the canyon.” He looked away from the lake, into the dark of the forest and the star-lit sky. “Usually it’s the other way around.”

“Will do.”

The ranger nodded again, and plodded off along the lake, his mass belaying a surprisingly quiet stride that ate up the distance, and within a few seconds he was out of sight.

“He seemed nice,” V commented as Al joined her by the fire. Al grunted.

“Have any of you seen Anneke? I require her assistance.” Charlie appeared at the edge of the fire, sans cooler, but holding a large bundle of silver objects that reflected wetly in the light. V shook her head.

“Not since lunch,” Al pointed to her prize, “What’d you find?”

Charlie seemed to stand a little straighter, her tiny chest puffing up, “Remmy caught them, fresh from the lake.”

Al stood and the two met at the food table. She held up almost a dozen fish for inspection, each one at least the length of her arm. “He has turned out to be quite the talented angler.” She declared before laying them out for inspection.

“Huh, these aren’t that bad,” Al picked one of the fish up. It flopped in his paw and gasped at the air. It was surprisingly heavy with a creamy pink running through silver scales. Little dots of black followed the pattern, and the whole thing seemed so much more vibrant than the fillets he bought at the store. “What’s he want to do with them?”

“Dinner.” She replied.

Al took another look at the fish. He would never, ever, admit it to the sheep, but he had caught some primo stuff here. Al lifted the smallest in his paw again and did some math. At the grocery store, this lot would have run him nearly $100, and he had literally just been handed them on a silver chain that Charlie was already wandering off with.

“Tell the omega to bring more,” he called. Charlie waved as she strode off back along the water. Al popped his knuckles and looked for his knives. Sure he could cut these fish open with his claws, but the deboning process was a little more delicate than he could manage.

“Hey,” V drew out the word as she flopped against Al’s back, “you never brought me my drink.”

“Sorry, honey, let me make you another,” Al sat V down beside him and quickly fixed her another vodka tonic, although it was mostly tonic.

“Thanks, babe,” she sipped from it and gave him a big dumb smile, her head lolling back onto the table. Al scooched her away from the fish and started into it.

 

“Fish’s up!” Al shouted. After filleting and deboning, he’d skewered each piece and roasted them over the fire. The skin had crisped up lovely, and he had sneaked a taste. It was some of his best work yet.

“Fish?” Al looked up to see Betty, limping in with a wooden plank.

“So, do we just eat it like this, or…?” Wolter asked, holding his skewer more like a sword than food.

“Peel the skin off, the meat should fall apart, so catch it with your plate.” Remmy replied.

Al followed the instructions, and yeah, it was even better like this. God damnit. To his left V finished her drink, and fell asleep against her log. He lifted her up and took her back to the tent, tucking her, then himself, under the covers to sleep until morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said this chapter was going to be shorter and release the week after Betty’s? What halcyon days those were, so full of promise, but time makes fools of us all.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is in the vague timeline of my other work, Alternative Coping Methods, and incorporates the Charlie/Remmy relationship established therein.


End file.
